How do you find the time to play and LEARN the guitar? I participate in volleyball and basketball and don’t forget homework! But I really want to learn how to play!!!

Time is one of those things that we approach differently depending what we want to do with it. We find that we make time for things when we need to or want to but don’t always see where that time comes from.

I started playing when I was seventeen. I was a junior in high school and basically between classes and working I didn’t get home until seven. Then homework. Then it’s time for bed already.

When you’re this busy you have to make time somewhere and you also have to make the best use of your time. As a beginner, the thing I worked on most was changing chords so I could play smoothly. I did this by learning songs. So on the weekends, I would take an hour or two that I might normally not be doing much of anything (sleeping late, watching television – no computers back then or I’m sure I’d be doing that as well) and learn one or two songs. Then during the week, whenever I had a moment – perhaps before dinner or waiting for my turn at the shower (four kids in the family) or (most usually) as a reward to myself for getting through one subject’s homework – I’d play what I learned over the weekend. Sometimes only once through, but usually, when you added it up, I got to play a half hour to an hour every day.

The thing is that I was always learning something. When refining a song during the week I might hit upon a technique that I’d try to remember to work into another song that I might learn the following weekend.

Time adds up. Even if you manage to find fifteen or thirty minutes a day, it adds up. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll FIND that time and then MAKE it your guitar time.

You might want to check out a couple of articles I wrote on the subject: Ten Ways for Beginner Guitar Players to Improve in a Hurry and A Question Of Balance. There’s also a page full of practice tips and ideas from many of Guitar Noise’s contributors here: Getting The Most Out of Your Practice.

As I mentioned, I’d love to hear some of your opinions and experiences on this. And I’m certain the person who wrote this would like to as well. Please share your thoughts on finding/making time to play and learn guitar in the comments below.

If you’ve got any questions, we at Guitar Noise are always happy to answer them. Just send any of your questions to David at dhodgeguitar@aol.com. He (or another Guitar Noise contributor) may not answer immediately but he will definitely answer!

How do you find time to play and LEARN guitar? was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But one major thing that you lack when teaching yourself is the feedback from either a teacher or your peers. You often have to rely on trial and error when it comes to basic things such as strumming or even holding a guitar. Truth be told, teaching yourself guitar runs the risk of developing some playing habits that can actually hinder your basic playing and make improving as a guitarist very difficult.

In order to help out those of you who are “going it alone,” I’ve listed ten common traps that newbie players fall into, plus some helpful tips (and links to articles here at Guitar Noise) to enable you to either avoid or get past them. And those of you who do have teachers, whether the lessons are in person or online, should feel free to make use of these tips as well!

Worry more about posture than looking cool

Playing well starts with paying attention to the basics. And nothing is more basic than how you hold the guitar, whether you’re sitting or standing while playing. Whenever you’re having trouble playing a chord cleanly or making a switch from one chord to another, you can often correct this by simply correcting your posture or position while holding your guitar.

Probably no on in the universe is more in tune with correct posture and position than Jamie Andreas. You should definitely check out any of her articles here at Guitar Noise, such as this one on correcting bad practice habits.

Don’t let your thumb boss your fingers around

The key to fretting notes quickly and cleanly is to keep your fingertips on the strings. Good posture and position will help you immensely when it comes to placing your fingers in an optimal playing position.

But you have to make sure that your thumb isn’t making your fingers’ job harder! Wrapping your thumb around the neck of the guitar, as you would a bat or a raquet, pulls the fingertips down and keeps them from making solid, clean-sounding notes. Let the pad of the thumb simply rest on the back of the neck and have your fingertips dictate where the thumb is positioned, not the other way around.

You’ll get a lot of helpful tips on both holding the guitar and placing your fingertips on the frets in our article called Holding Your Own (which will be out the first week of October).

Strum with the wrist, not the whole arm

Keeping the beat and playing steady, confident rhythms is essential for any guitarist, even those who only want to play leads and solos. But most beginners, especially those who’ve only seen guitarists on videos, think that strumming involves an incredible amount of energy and a wild flailing of the arms. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Strumming comes from the wrist and forearm and requires surprisingly little arm movement. Use the same wrist/forearm action you’d use to unscrew a light bulb to strum your guitar. We also call this the “sock puppet” approach, as you’ll read in many of our Strumming for Beginners articles, which you can find in our “Hot Lessons” section.

Learn to count out rhythms and stop worrying about “strumming patterns”

Many beginners use the idea of strumming patterns as a way to work on rhythm. But a strumming pattern is simply one of many ways of strumming any song, yet many newbies get to the point where they’ll obsess about the “down and up” strumming and, ironically, not learn how to play in a steady rhythm.  You’ll be amazed at how upstrokes and downstrokes simply fall into place once you’ve learned how to count out the rhythm of a song. For a basic eighth note strum, the downstrokes occur right on the beat. If you’re strumming sixteenth notes, then the  downstrokes happen on each half beat.

If you can get yourself to count to four (and occasionally three), there will be no strumming pattern that you can’t figure out. If you don’t believe me, check out this article on converting any rhythm into the “down and up” that beginners seem to favor.

And for help in strumming in general, you might find our Guitar Noise Podcasts to be incredibly useful. Not to brag, but they are one of the best rhythm aids you might find on the Internet. Why? Because they get you to:

Use your ears instead of your eyes

Music is aural, not visual. Professional musicians will invariably tell you that listening is the most important talent for any player to develop. Rhythm is something you feel and hear. Relying on your eyes to tell you when a chord change occurs will almost always put you behind and off the beat. Work on first using, and then trusting and developing your ears and leaving your eyes behind for a while. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you start to make more progress.

Get rid of your chord charts as soon as you can

The sooner you memorize your basic major and minor chords, the sooner you can dispense with chord charts and as soon as you do that you’ll find that you have more time to enjoy playing! There will always be new chords to learn, but do your best to memorize all the chords you’ve played as soon as possible. And the best way to do that is to practice making chord changes.

Use the correct finger (or fingers) to start off a chord change

Most beginners tend to go at chord changes one finger at a time. Take playing a C chord, for instance. Usually, many beginners will switch to C by first placing the index finger on the first fret of the B string, then the middle finger on the second fret of the D and then finally the ring finger on the third fret of the A. And only then, once all their fingers are in place, are they ready to strum the C chord.

This means that you won’t even begin your strum until after all your fingers are in place and you’ll be behind on the beat.

Try to build your chords from the “bottom up,” meaning that you want to get your fingers on the low strings first. In the case of the C, you want to lead with your ring finger and get your index finger down last. Connecting the Dots (Part 2)

Keep your fingers close to the strings

Often, a new player’s first reaction to an upcoming chord change is to move all his fingers as far from the fretboard as possible! That definitely makes it hard to get to the following chord in any appreciable amount of time. You want to try to keep your fingers close to the frets and you also want to learn to minimize the movement needed when changing chords.  Sometimes one or two fingers don’t need to move all that far (if at all) from their initial position.

Work on moving your fingers as a unit

Ultimately, you want your fingers to move from one chord to another as a unit, and two simple exercises can help you get started in that direction. First, form a chord you’re working on – say, E. When you have your fingers in place, relax them but don’t lose contact with the strings. Now press your fingers hard onto the strings simultaneously, harder than you normally would to play the chord.
You’re likely to hear the notes of the E chord as you press the strings onto the neck of the guitar. After you press hard, relax again but still keep in contact with the strings. Don’t lose the chord! Repeat this ten to twelve times.

The companion exercise is pretty much the same, but you want to start by having your fingers on the strings as if you were playing the chord. Then relax and raise your fingers, as a unit, just off the strings. Keep them close enough that you can put them back on the strings at the same time.

The object of these exercises is to get your fingers acclimated to working together on the chord. Eventually, they will learn to leave one chord and arrive at another as a team. That doesn’t necessarily mean all at the same time, but certainly very close to it.

Learn whole songs

What would you say about a cover band that only played the first few bars of every tune they started? Would you pay to see Neil Young play just the start of “Cinnamon Girl?” Or imagine going to see Metallica and having them play only the introduction of “Enter Sandman.”

People listen to musicians to hear songs, whole songs. So while it can certainly be satisfying to learn a particularly difficult introduction or guitar fill or solo, don’t settle for learning just one part of any song. The art of making music comes from playing the whole piece! And, in the long run, you’re going to learn a lot more – the importance of the timing of the guitar parts (not to mention keeping time in general!), the structure of the song as well as its harmonies and chord progressions (which you’ll be able to use in many other songs), and the skill of shaping both your sound and your guitar parts to fit the dynamics of the song. And what you learn is going to help you become a much better musician as you continue to grow and evolve.

I hope that these tips have been, or will be, of use to you. Please feel free to drop a comment or email with more! After all, we’re all here to learn and to grow.

Peace

Ten Ways for Beginner Guitar Players to Improve in a Hurry was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

From teaching hundreds of guitar players over the last twenty-five years, I have found that most musicians do not have a shortage of “things to practice” on guitar.  The problem that I see many guitar players run into is not knowing how to organize all of their guitar exercises into an effective guitar practice schedule that moves them towards becoming better musicians.  If this sounds like you, then I want to show you how to determine what you need to practice on guitar to improve your musical skills in the fastest way possible.

The first significant mistake that guitar players make with regards to guitar exercises is practicing “too many” of them.  As a result, too much energy is spent trying to decide (at random) what exercise to play next, instead of concentrating on getting the most benefit out of each exercise being practiced.  In reality, you can very often achieve a lot more by intelligently focusing on a smaller, targeted list of guitar practice materials than you can from a longer list of guitar exercises that are put together at random (more on this in a moment).

Another reason why guitar players struggle to make progress with all of their guitar practice materials is because they make the mistake of starting to look for “things to practice” before becoming clear on why they need to practice guitar exercises in the first place.  Keep in mind that guitar practice materials can only make your guitar playing better when they are practiced with a specific objective in mind.  Mindlessly playing through guitar finger exercises will not make your guitar playing any better until your mind is clear on several things:

1. The “precise” guitar playing skill (or problem) that you are attempting to improve by practicing a given guitar exercise.
2. Your long term guitar playing goals and how the exercise you are working on will help you to get closer to becoming the musician you want to be.

It is critical to keep in mind that guitar exercises are only important for you to practice if they help you to develop a specific guitar playing skill or to solve a specific problem. The more specific you can become about what you are trying to achieve, the easier it will be to determine the most effective guitar practice materials for reaching that goal.  For example, instead of saying: “I want to fix my sloppy guitar playing”, you need to pinpoint a problem precisely such as: “I need to learn how to mute unwanted string noise that comes from the strings I’m not playing when I play three-string arpeggios”.  Most guitar players never develop the level of clarity needed to benefit from their guitar practice materials and instead assume that the solution to their problem is to find “new and better” guitar exercises to practice.  This leads to a never ending cycle of frustration and slow progress.

If you are feeling frustrated from not knowing which guitar exercises to focus your practice time on, ask yourself the following question: “what skill is this exercise helping me develop or what specific guitar playing problem am I trying to solve by practicing this exercise?”  If you can’t answer this question, then here are five critical things you must do to get more from your guitar practicing:

1. Clearly define your long term guitar playing goals.
2. Find out what musical skills you must develop in order to achieve the long term result that you want.  To help you do this critically important step, study this free resource about how to learn to play guitar.
3. With the clarity you have achieved from doing Steps 1 and 2 above, it will now be much easier to narrow
   down your guitar practice exercises to those that are very specific to your guitar playing challenges.  Do this to prepare yourself for Step 4.
4. Design a highly effective guitar practice schedule containing the guitar exercises you have selected in the previous step.  Organizing your guitar practice time in the most efficient way possible will require some experience to be done correctly. If you need help with doing this, read this page on how to build a guitar practice schedule.
5. Keep your mind actively engaged the entire time you are practicing.  You must always stay focused on the specific objective you are trying to achieve and never let your fingers go on autopilot while practicing.  As your guitar playing improves and you get more experience, you will find that very often you can use a single guitar exercise to develop multiple guitar playing skills at the same time (check out this video on how to practice guitar for an explanation of this concept).

When you begin to implement the above steps into your guitar practicing, you will find that the process of reaching your musical goals will become a much easier and more enjoyable experience.

If you take guitar lessons with an experienced guitar teacher, you should already be familiar with how to structure your guitar practice sessions with these ideas in mind.

However, if you are struggling with knowing what to practice on guitar, implement the ideas from this article into your guitar playing and you will begin to see your guitar playing improve faster than you ever thought possible!

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a touring musician, composer and the guitar player for the metal band Rhapsody Of Fire.
He teaches electric guitar online lessons to guitarists around the world.  On his website tomhess.net,
you can find guitar playing tips, free guitar resources and more guitar articles.

How To Discover The Best Guitar Learning Materials was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The first two levels are where we use specific procedures for teaching the fingers how to make the movements required to produce the notes we need. All technical problems are worked out in these two levels, and the music is “input” into the mind and body, at least as far as the mechanical process of playing the music goes.

However, the goal of all our practice is to go beyond the mechanical aspect of playing, and to put our mastery of the physical aspect of playing our music at the service of the ultimate goal: making music, real music. That is the purpose of the third level of practice, Shaping.

Imagine you are in a play, and they hand you your lines. You have to read them, and memorize them, and practice saying them. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with some of the words, you would have to learn the pronunciation, and practice saying the word correctly (Microscopic Practice). Perhaps you had a problem remembering all the lines, and saying them at the right time. You would have to work that out as well (Assimilating). Finally, it would be rehearsal time. You would be expected to have your lines down, and as the opening night came nearer, the director would expect you to be pumping blood into that part, and delivering a real flesh and blood character to the audience. He or she would be trying to help you and guide you to an ultimate vision of that character’s essence. The greater the actor and director, the more powerful that final vision and product will be. That final process is Shaping.

This is what we need to do with our music, to the best of our artistic skills, at any point in our development. Interestingly enough, many guitar students avoid this aspect of practice. They actually avoid putting everything together, and doing what guitar players are meant to do: “play” the guitar. This avoidance also prevents them from developing themselves into something that every guitar player should be, something that is actually more important than becoming a guitarist – becoming a musician.

Why do guitar students avoid this?

Many guitar students are afraid of putting everything together! They are always “trying” to learn a song, solo, or piece of music.  They do not know how to do the first  two levels of practice, and because of this they make many mistakes during
playing, and breakdown all over the place. If they were to try to put all the music together and play it from beginning to end, they would get so frustrated and depressed at their inability to get through the music that they would feel like they might as well stop fooling themselves, do the world a favor, and give up the guitar!

Every guitar student must learn the first two levels of practice before they are even capable of the third level. We must be able to actually teach our fingers to do what they have to do to make each note we need, and we need to be able to string all those movements together into one continuous flow, so that our music can be given birth.

But like everything other living entity, after being born, our music must be developed. It must “grow,” it must “mature,” and ultimately have a life of its own that nonetheless reflects where it came from. All those who are already musicians know this, and do this. And so must every guitar student  if they wish to become guitar players and musicians.

How do we develop the music we play after we have given it birth, or the possibility of existing? How do we turn the results of the mechanical process of learning new finger movements into the wonderful emotional phenomenon we call “music?”

Like so many other things in life, there is only one way to do it, and that is to do it!

We must sit down, or stand up with our guitar, and play the music as if we were on stage performing it, or as if we were recording it. We must play the whole thing through, and on top of that, enjoy the music we are making as we do it. We must develop a relationship to the music itself, as if it were a living being we are getting to know. We must let it soak into us and speak to us. We must discover its meaning, for us, and we must let the music tell us how it wishes to be played. I call this process “going for the music.”

You may be thinking, “Well, isn’t that obvious? Do you really have to tell guitar players that they need to play the guitar? You don’t have to tell tennis players they need to play tennis do you?” If you are thinking that, and you are a guitar teacher, I guarantee you have many students who are not doing this. To them, it is not obvious, they need to be told to do it, in fact, they often need to be forced to do it.

I require all may students to do this, perhaps not with everything we work on, but I want to see a “body of work” developing over time, a group of pieces that they can play well, from beginning to end, in other words, a repertoire. To help them do this, to learn the hard work of “refining” a piece to performance level, I have made the “Guitar Principles Guitar Improvement Workshop” open to everyone, my personal students as well as all interested parties.

Getting Started

It can be overwhelming to begin this new, improved relationship to music and the guitar if you are one of the many guitar players who has never really taken command of a group of songs, solos, or pieces, and put them together, refined
them, and brought them to “performance level.” Here is how to get started:

1) Pick 3 songs or pieces that you love, and feel are reasonable for you to expect to handle in a technical way.

2) Start with the first one, and begin to practice it with the intention of playing the whole thing from beginning to end.

3) Divide your song or piece into sections. Learn the first section. For a song, you might learn just the intro first, then add
the first verse, then the pre-chorus, then chorus. Divide it into sections that make sense to you.

4) Focus on that first section. Do the necessary technical work at the Level 1 & 2 practice. If you use “The
Principles,” you will know exactly how to do this. Use “The Basic Practice Approach” to bring the music to a slow but steady tempo.  Usually, half of the performance speed is a good first goal.

5) Video yourself playing it. It will probably have various problems and breakdowns. Do not get upset! Instead, make the
decision to find out what is wrong, by educating yourself about how to practice.

Go to my “Guitar Improvement Workshop”. Post the link to your video. You will then be told the nature of your problems and also exactly what you need to do to solve those problems and improve your playing.

You can be a good guitar player, and reach your guitar playing goals. But you have to do what all the rest of us who have become guitar players had to do. You have to “make it real” by going for the music, and when you find that you can’t quite get what you are going for, you have to learn how to remove whatever obstacle stands between you and your vision of the music.

For the ever-evolving guitarist/musician, technical understanding, technical work, and the achievement of greater musical intensity in our playing go hand in hand in each day’s practice.

Copyright 2011 Jamie Andreas. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.

Jamie Andreas is a world renown, highly respected guitar teacher and author. Visit her website, guitarprinciples.com, for a free copy of “The Power of 10,” a PDF download of ten essays that are essential reading for every student of the guitar as well as all guitarists.

Going for the Music: From Guitar Student to Guitar Player was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-
-----------------5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-
---------------------------------5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7- etc.

Repeat this drill with each finger combination. Your top speed will be slightly less than it was practicing on a single string, but over time the difference won’t be a noticeable one.

With this much technique development under your belt, you can turn to scale runs. The difference between the simple drills shown above and most scale patterns is the number of notes on a string – if there are three notes, your hand will end up in the wrong place to pick the next note. Here’s a C major scale in 7th position:

----------------------------------7-8-
---------------------------8-10------
--------------------7-9-10----------
-------------7-9-10-----------------
------7-8-10------------------------
-8-10-------------------------------

Strive for accuracy as you play. Remember everything we’ve covered so far, and focus on keeping your motions as small as possible in both hands, and stay relaxed.

As you played through that exercise, you’ll find your top speed is not as fast as it was with the earlier drills. That’s partly due to more complex fretting hand movements, but it’s also a result of your pick being in the wrong place for the next stroke – if you start with a downstroke, the third note on the fifth string will be a downstroke – which means you’ll now have to move PAST the fourth string in order to maintain alternate picking. We can eliminate this motion through economy picking, but before we get there I’ll digress into string skipping; economy picking takes some effort to develop, and you’ll need string skipping in your bag of tricks to play most solos.

Many solos or runs, or at least some of the more interesting ones, have notes on non-adjacent strings. You’ll need to avoid the string(s) in between, and that presents a couple of new challenges.

When you’re skipping strings, your hands have to cover a greater distance between notes. As a result, your top speed for string skipping will be slightly less than going full out on a scale run, but with practice the difference can become manageable.

To practice string skipping, I like to alternate scale runs with a fixed note, called a pedal point. This example uses a 1st string pedal G note on an open position C scale – the scale note is a down stroke, the first string is always an upstroke:

---3---3---3---3---3---3---3----3---3---3---3---3----
-------------------------0---1---0---------------------------
-----------------0---2---------------2---0------------------
-----0---2---3-------------------------------3---2---0----
-3----------------------------------------------------------3-
----------------------------------------------------------------

For a drill that’s a little tougher, make the skip to an inside string. This exercise is an open G scale against a 2nd string D pedal. Put your third finger on the D note – you’ll need your fourth finger free to hit the F# on the fourth string:

-
---3---3----3----3----3----3---3-
-----------------------------0------
-----------------0----2----4--------
-----0---2----3---------------------
-3------------------------------------- etc

Ok, back to solving the problem of the pick being out of position for the next note. A faster approach to runs like this is to shift to economy, or directional picking. Here ‘economy’ refers to economy of motion – and ‘directional’ is how you achieve it: if your pick is moving in the direction of the next note you’ll need to play, you simply continue in that direction, playing two notes in a row with the same stroke. I’d advise you not to start working on this until you’re very comfortable with alternate picking – otherwise you’ll find it more confusing, and perhaps counter-productive.

Here’s the same C major scale done with economy picking. The ‘D’ and ‘U’ notations show how your pick is moving:

D U D U D D U D D U D D U D U
--------------------------------7-8-
---------------------------8-10-----
--------------------7-9-10----------
-------------7-9-10-----------------
------7-8-10------------------------
-8-10-------------------------------

Finally, we come to sweep picking. Sweep picking is basically a slow-motion strum, with all downstrokes or upstrokes across the strings. If more than one note is sounded on a string, the second (and any additional) notes are sounded by hammer-ons and pull-offs. The trick to sweeping well is deadening the strings that aren’t needed. As this technique requires a bit more explanation, I’d suggest checking out some of the instruction videos available for it on YouTube and other websites – but I’d hold off until you’ve gotten the above techniques down.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 8 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 1
• Speed Secrets – Part 2
• Speed Secrets – Part 3
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 4 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Fretting hand motions can be broken down into notes on a single string, notes on strings in order (as in a scale run), and string skipping. Picking hand motions fall into four categories: uni-directional, alternate picking, economy (or ‘directional’) picking, and sweep picking.

All uni-directional picking is technically limiting, because you have to bring the pick back into playing position between each note. Because of this, most players wouldn’t consider it ‘speed picking’. But this type of picking is stylistically demanded for certain genres – punk rock is often all downstrokes, and reggae can make use of all upstrokes for extended periods of time. If that’s the kind of music you play, you’ll want to practice increasing your recovery time – the amount of time it takes you to ‘reset’ your hand for the next note. The key here is slow practice, focusing on moving the pick as little as possible to get through the strings – plural, because in punk it’s two- or three-string power chords, and in reggae it’s typically three-string voicings on the highest strings. On the recovery stroke, focus on brining your hand up or down ONLY as far as you need to for the next attack.

Alternate picking is theoretically twice as fast as uni-directional picking, because you’ll produce an additional note on the recovery stroke. It’s also a prerequisite for economy picking, so you’ll want to spend a fair amount of your speed work on alternate picking drills. To illustrate developing this technique, we’ll combine it with our first fretting hand category, notes on a single string.

Pick any spot on the neck and place your index finger on a fret. You’ll downstroke this note; as soon as you’ve played it, your pick will reverse direction, and you’ll play the same string with an upstroke – but you’ll play the note at the next fret with your second finger. Here I’ve illustrated this drill in fifth position:

-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-

Once you’re comfortable with this approach, you’ll use metronome drills to increase your speed. I’ll cover using a metronome in a future part of this series.

It’s important to develop your speed in all of your fingers, and you’ll want to use it with any combination of fingers that a passage might require. Using two fingers, there are six possibilities: 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, and 3-4. Practice each combination on a single string. The hardest ones will be 1-4, 2-4, and 3-4; be sure you stop if your hand starts to cramp up!

One more thing before forging ahead: you’ll want to do these drills two different ways: holding down the first finger, and lifting the first finger as you play the second note. Keeping the original finger down is easy to master, but it can be limiting depending on your melody – there will be plenty of times you’ll need that finger on another string for the next note, and lifting it as soon as you can makes it easier to get that next note in time. In actual performance, you’ll keep the finger down when you return to the same note, and you’ll lift it if you need that finger for the next note. So be sure to prepare yourself by practicing it both ways!

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 7 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 1
• Speed Secrets – Part 2
• Speed Secrets – Part 4
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 3 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Easier said than done though isn’t it? Don’t worry! There are many guitar players who fall into a rather frustrating gap between learning their scale patterns and finding themselves spontaneously able to play great-sounding blues solos!

Guitar teachers often find that they have to devote a considerable amount of lesson time to helping their students bridge this gap. I think  there are actually several elements that need to be in place before this gap is successfully spanned and, although the mix of these elements will vary from student to student, I would list the following as being typical:

• Confidence to enter wholeheartedly into the ‘trial and error’ process that improvising necessarily entails.
• Development of good left/right hand coordination
• Mastery of basic technique (bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato etc…)
• A ’library’ of well-rehearsed licks (both original and er…borrowed!)
• An understanding of typical blues phrasing patterns (‘call and response’ or ‘question and answer’ for example)
• A good ear for tension and resolution as used in blues
• An intuitive sense of blues phrasing and timing

The first item on my list, confidence,– will of course vary from one individual to another at the outset, but proactively focusing on the other  items on the list will itself result in an increase in your level of confidence.

Good coordination, technique and a stock of licks comes from lots of practice, but the last three items on the list are probably best improved by simply listening to as much great blues guitar playing as you can.

Many years ago, I wrote a six-verse long Texas style blues instrumental specifically to help students bridge the gap between scales and solos.

This tune is designed to help you use the scale notes in simple phrases that resolve to the chords used in the twelve-bar sequence and to establish a feel for how the lead lines fit in with the chords (the ‘call and response’ pattern mentioned earlier).

The first verse, shown in detail in the video lessons below, starts by establishing a rhythmic pattern typical of the style most associated with Stevie Ray Vaughan and if you want to progress onto learning some of his tunes, this is a great primer!

These lessons are designed for beginners or near beginners, but I am sure that more experienced player will enjoy them too – they’ll just whiz through them quicker!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs4oFM9MqIc

The trickiest part is the timing, shown here in standard notation:

Notice the one beat rest at the start. This is best dealt with by counting yourself in:  1 2 3 4 1 … and then playing the notes on beats: 2 & 3 & 4 & 1. In the ‘call and response’ pattern these notes are the ‘call’ and the response comes from the chords played on beats 2(&) 3& (4)& of the second bar.

This rhythmic pattern is repeated throughout the verse.

If that explanation leaves you wondering if this is a bit more complex than it claims – please check out the video lesson – hearing it will make a lot more sense than my attempts to convey the idea in text!

Hope you enjoy learning this – if you do, hop over to www.secretguitarteacher.com where you’ll find a whole course that goes over all six verses on videos and you can also download the tab and backing tracks.

Copyright © 2011 Nick Minnion, (used by permission)

Nick Minnion has recorded over 100 video guitar lessons that can be found at his new site, www.secretguitarteacher.com.

He also runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit TeachGuitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.

Putting the Rhythm in the Blues was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

One of the keys to staying relaxed when you’re playing fast is using the correct muscles to drive the pick. Picking strings can be done with three different sets of muscles: the fingers, the wrist, or the forearm.

Picking with the fingers alone involves holding the hand stationary, and moving the pick up and down using only the motion of the thumb going down, and the index finger going up. The muscles used to create this picking motion are largely those in the hand and fingers. This approach is most useful for slow, quiet passages, or for very short runs – I’ll use this technique for things like a quick subdivision, where I’m playing 3-5 notes in the space of a half of a beat.

Picking from the wrist keeps the arm stationary, but moves the hand up and down over the strings. When you pick from the wrist, you’re using the larger muscles of the forearm instead of those of the hand and fingers – and bigger muscles don’t get tired as quickly. Wrist picking probably accounts for 85% or more of the picking I do, and it’s probably where you’ll spend most of your time practicing.

Picking from the forearm transfers the workload even farther up, and uses mostly the bicep and triceps muscles to drive the pick. This is done by ‘locking’ the wrist, and making the motion from the elbow. Since these are the largest muscles you can use in picking, they can handle the most sustained effort. This approach is best for tremolo picking, and it’s also useful for sweep picking.

To practice the various techniques and make them habit, it’s best to isolate the picking hand at first. That means you’ll practice while repeating a single note (which can even be an open string if you’d like). This is where you’ll eventually discover your ultimate top speed, as you’ll never be able to pick a complicated run any faster than you’ll be able to move the pick back and forth across a single string.

After you’ve decided what muscles you’ll use for the exercise, concentrate on staying loose. If you find you’re becoming tense, slow down! A useful exercise for developing your speed by staying loose is one I borrowed from the ‘fartlek’ (speed play) training that runners do: you’ll start picking slowly, build up the speed, back off a bit, and repeat. A typical drill for this sort of practice might look like this:

• 50% speed for 10 seconds
• 75% speed for 5 seconds
• 90% speed for 5 seconds
• 75% speed for 10 seconds
• 90% speed for 10 seconds
• 100% speed for 5 seconds
• 75% speed for 5 seconds
• 50% speed for 10 seconds

Notice that the drill takes just one minute. After that, shake out your picking arm, relax for a minute or so, and then repeat it. As with slow practice, you want to be focused on your goal: changing speed without increasing the tension in your muscles.

You’ll also want to devote some practice sessions to eliminating tension in your fretting hand. Many players tend to increase the force of their fingers when they increase the speed, and this creates tension that ultimately limits your top speed. Playing fast requires a light touch; your fingers need to dance across the fretboard, not stomp on the strings. Fartlek type drills can be useful for this; just concentrate on using as light a touch as possible without sacrificing your tone – it’s probably a lot less pressure than you think.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 5 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 1
• Speed Secrets – Part 3
• Speed Secrets – Part 4
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 2 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

In this brief series, I’m going to reveal some of the ways you can make your playing speed faster – in fact, most guitarists will be able to play MUCH faster in a relatively short period of time.

In my teaching, I’ve noticed three barriers to developing speed: excess motion, excess tension, and a lack of coordination between the hands. Excluding virtuosi, we all suffer from one or more of these barriers. We’ll deal with them one at a time.

Excess motion is moving your fingers (or your pick, which I’ll get to in a moment) farther than you have to in executing a series of notes. Distance equals time: the more you lift your fingers, the harder you’ll have to work to achieve the same speed. If you lift your fingers one inch off the strings, your fingers must move EIGHT TIMES faster than a guitarist who only lifts an eighth of an inch!

You’ve probably heard the maxim ‘you learn to play fast by playing slow’. What this really means is rarely explained: playing slowly allows you to focus on your technique. Repeating a technical drill over and over at a very slow speed lets you build a habit, and once you have a habit ingrained, it becomes second nature – it’s what you’ll naturally do every time you play.

As you work through scales and other exercises you’ll find or develop on your own, start by slowing down… WAY down. 30-50% of your top speed is probably about right. Watch your fretting hand, and focus on keeping your fingers as close to the strings as possible. Don’t be impatient; it’s going to take a lot of slow practice sessions to make it habitual, so in the beginning I’d do only slow practice for a week or three before ramping up the tempo.

The picking hand needs the same attention, but in addition there’s a gear factor: the pick you choose. When I started working on developing my speed, I made the same mistake I’ve seen other guitarists make over and over – I switched to a thin pick, thinking it would move more easily through the strings.

As I got faster, I realized the problem with this thinking: thin picks are very flexible. As they pass through the string, they bend… and the point of the pick has to snap back into place before you can pick the next note. You’ll actually reach higher speeds with a stiff pick.

Since heavy picks are harder to force through the string, you’ll probably have to make an adjustment or two in how your pick hits the strings. The more pick you’re using (i.e., the farther your pick extends through the plane of the strings as you play), the more resistance there’s going to be. Devote some of your practice time to focusing on your picking hand, and trying to minimize the amount of pick you use – an eighth of an inch, or even less, is enough to get the string to sound.

Another adjustment you can make is to ‘cock’ your grip – instead of holding the pick parallel to the string, strike at an angle… the edge of the pick should be the surface hitting the string. This lets the rounded point glide across the string, instead of having to forcing the face of the pick through it.

To get the correct grip for this, start by holding the pick flat against a string. Without changing the placement of your hand, tip the point of your thumb either up or down; that will rotate the pick slightly, and you’ll be presenting the edge of the pick to the string. I cock my thumb down, but I know a few guitarists who are more comfortable cocking it up, bending the thumb joint slightly backward. Either way will result in less resistance than striking the string ‘flat’ with the pick.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 4 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

More Speed Secrets

• Speed Secrets – Part 2
• Speed Secrets – Part 3
• Speed Secrets – Part 4
• Speed Secrets – Part 5

Speed Secrets – Part 1 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I’ve always been into solos myself.  While I have a history of being the sole guitar player in bands, more often than not, the solos are where I put the vast majority of my efforts. The result was rhythms that were not as strong as they could be. Luckily for me, I got the opportunity to work with one of the best rhythm players in metal, when I collaborated on the Knightfall CD with the Annihilator main man, Jeff Waters. He explained to me exactly what makes for superlative guitar tracks and this advice is great (not to mention essential!) for both rhythm and lead playing. Believe me, there’s a lot more to it that you probably ever imagined!  Today, I’m going to share with you what I learned from a bona fide master.

1. Impeccable Timing

This is probably the first thing that comes to mind when you think about rhythm tracking.  Ever since Les Paul invented multi-tracking some fifty plus years ago, the ability to overdub tracks has elevated the importance of being able to play tightly to a click. That seems like a no brainer, but all too often, people belittle the true amount of work and effort that’s required to be able to play tightly.

I used to play a song to a metronome a couple of times before recording and thought to myself that it sounded great. Had I actually recorded my playing and listened back to it, I would have seen just how uneven my parts were!

Contrast that to Mr. Waters’ obsession of playing everything to a click, including picking and scale exercises. In fact, his motto is: “if you don’t practice to a click, then it doesn’t count as practice.”

2. Clearly Accentuated Picking

Listen closely to any great player’s tracks and you’ll instantly notice how well how clearly defined every note is. These guys and gals have spent countless hours honing their picking technique until it runs like a well-oiled machine. When they play a passage, they don’t just concentrate on hitting the notes on time, they are thinking about making each note sound even and well defined.  It’s like speaking or, more accurately, singing. Wouldn’t you rather listen to somewhat who clearly enunciates each syllable, than someone who slurs them together like a sloppy drunk?

These players have put a lot of thought into the gauge and material of their picks as both make a lot of difference to your sound. Moreover, they tend to strike the strings at the optimal depth and at an angle that is as flush with the string as possible. Angling the pick a bit might make it easer to pass through the string, but it doesn’t sound as good.

3. String Muting

Just as proper accentuating of each note is essential to great rhythm tracks, it is equally critical to mute all unwanted string noise from one’s playing. Don’t count on drums hiding minor string noise. It’ll still be there to some degree, if only on some subliminal level.

To the average guitar player, suppressing string noise falls somewhere after timing, which comes after hitting the right notes, on the priorities list. While in a live situation, you can certainly get away with some string noise, it won’t fly on recordings. Especially when dealing with high gain settings, control over feedback on string noise is a prerequisite. Therefore, you have to train yourself to listen for it.

Common offenders are the fretting hand when switching between chords. The picking hand can also be at fault when your palm doesn’t come down between notes, misses one of the strings, or simply rubs against them while picking. All of these are flaws in technique than need to be worked on. If you can’t eliminate string noise when playing a part, then try changing it. There are a lot of ways to play the same thing on a guitar, so don’t get stuck on only one way.

4. Tuning and Pitch

Guitarists take it for granted that you have to tune your instrument before recording, but I am constantly shocked at just how nonchalant most people are about tuning. It’s not until they are faced with a professional engineer that they realize what’s actually involved in recording a pro-level CD. Not that, when I say professional engineer, I mean someone who has experience in recording CDs for major labels. Even in home recording situations, musicians always show up with a low end tuner. While those are fine for jamming and playing small bars, they are not adequate for any recording purposes. Strangely enough, even a lot of supposedly pro quality gear has very minimal tuning capabilities.

For recording, you need something that will go well within 2% deviation, which is where most people can detect out-of-tuneness. For that, you need something like a Korg rack tuner. All you need is about $250 to shell out!  If you want to go really precise, nothing beats a strobe tuner.  Some of which can go as high as five to six thousand dollars!

Thanks to the magic of digital recording, you don’t need to spend very much money at all to achieve pitch perfect tuning.  Peterson, who makes the best strobe tuners in the biz, also makes a software version of their coveted strobe tuners called Strobosoft.  It can get to 0.1% precision. That’s up to 30 times better than the average tuner. It’s what I use.

Unfortunately, using a high-precision tuner is not enough to achieve excellent pitch in your recordings. Alas, the guitar is a very temperamental beast and reacts to its surroundings.  Not only does the temperature and humidity of the room wreak havoc on the pitch, but even your fingers can throw off the pitch by a couple of percents, which is enough to go from extremely in tune to noticeably out of tune!

I’ll never forget how, in my early days of club playing, I would tune my guitar backstage (or in the bathroom, depending on the conditions), only to have it go way out of tune by the end of the first song! I eventually came to realize that the difference in temperature was making the guitar go flat.  At that point I started leaving the guitar on stage and then tuning it shortly before show time so that it would have time to acclimatize to the environment. I would warm up on a second guitar, backstage.

The best way to have your guitar stay in tune while you do your tracking is to begin by warming up the strings using your fingers. Play something or simply rub the strings with your hands. Once you’ve warmed up the strings, give each one of them a good pull. And I mean a good pull, almost hard enough that you try to break them! This is a crucial and necessary step as it will remove any stretching capacity that is left in the strings (you are using brand new strings right?) and helps wrap it as tightly as possible around the tuning peg. The idea is that the string won’t have any room left to fall. Even when you think that the string is taught and ready, a few good pulls will loosen it – and the pitch – way down! Keep doing this until pulling the string no longer has any effect on the pitch.

Now, after you’ve done the stretching and pulling, the enemy is sharpness. Every time that you stop to listen to your takes, the strings immediately start to get cold. And that means re-warming and retuning them.

You may be surprised to learn that in a professional recording session, guitar players spend more time tuning that playing their tracks! That’s one of the reasons that you have to be such a good player to record CDs. You have to be skilled enough to lay down high quality takes within a couple of minutes, which is about as long as you can go without a tuning break.  Because of the volatility of strings, it behooves you to become very quick at tuning. The faster the better!

5. Good Sound

Your sound has to bring out your ideas and expression, not hamper them. Too many guitar players use distortion as a crutch in an effort to hide weakness in technique. Have I done it? Duh, yeah!

Listen carefully to any great guitarist and you’ll notice that their tone enhances everything that they are doing. It’s no accident. They work hard on it. Even when you think that an artist is using lots of distortion, it is really their playing that is making the sound through aggressive playing (more on that in a moment). Universally, enhancing one’s expression means turning down the gain and bringing out the subtleties in one’s playing. Just be aware that this also makes it easier to hear weaknesses in technique!

6. Play Like You Mean It!

Closely related to #5 above, great players don’t play a part like the average person.  While the latter simply plays a passage, a true guitar expert will express it. And the way that she or he does that is to play every note with conviction. Most of us tend to concentrate on key notes – the ones that represent the main chord movements or lock in with other instruments. As a result, a lot of less important notes, like passing tones, and so on, will receive less attention, and suffer for it.

This issue goes a lot deeper than focusing on all of the notes and picking harder. The purpose of music is to express yourself, so when you doubt yourself and are unsure of what you’re playing, it will come out. Only by learning to entertain positive thoughts about yourself and realizing that you have just as much right as anyone to be on a stage in the studio, can you bring out your full potential in your playing.  I’m not saying that great artists don’t have issues, because they clearly do, but their playing is not one of them!

Knowing what makes a great rhythm player, or just a great player period, is not sufficient for achieving greatness. That takes dedication, sacrifice, and the ability to accurately gauge your playing. Neither blindly adhering to the belief that you are a great player or a lousy one will advance your cause. Ironically, some of what it takes to be a great guitar player has very little to do with guitar playing per se. But don’t take that as an invitation to go on a self-expanding voyage. You still need to focus a whole lot on guitar!

Rob Gravelle recently embarked on a solo music career, after playing since 2000 with Ivory Knight, a band rated as one Canada’s top bands by Brave Words magazine (issue #92) and who released two CDs. In 2007, Rob recorded the KNIGHTFALL CD in collaboration with the former Ivory Knight vocalist and legendary guitarist/producer, Jeff Waters of Annihilator fame.

You can click here to access Rob’s iTunes link

Secrets to Recording Wicked Guitar Parts was written by Rob Gravelle for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Practicing frequently (several times a day for just a few minutes at a time) will produce better results than practicing for a long time every few days.

It’s not how much time you put in; it’s how much you put into your time. Focused practice can accomplish a lot efficiently – but wiggling your fingers around while your mind drifts really isn’t practicing!

If you practice as early as you can – even right after you get up in the morning – you won’t be as likely to miss any practice sessions. And if you feel like it, you can always get in an extra practice session later on in the day.

The ability to play an instrument builds one skill on top of others. Make sure you get the fundamentals right.

Review should be part of your practice routine. When you learned to read, you probably had a favorite book you read hundreds of times – learning to read music takes the same kind of review.

Try to practice for a few minutes right after a lesson – it will help you remember little details.

Muscle memory is developed through repetition. An amateur practices until they get it right; a professional practices until they never get it wrong!

Try to sing what you play. It will help you develop your ear and improve the results you get from practicing.

The first time you play a piece, keep a pencil handy. Mark the spots you have trouble with – those are the ones you should put the most practice time into!

Break complex passages down into smaller bites and work through each one before trying to put the whole thing together.

There’s a difference between practicing and rehearsing, and between practicing and playing. Approach each session understanding what your purpose is.

There is a best time of the day to practice, but it depends on you. Pay attention to the results you get at different times of the day, and try to practice during your most productive times.

Practice slowly enough so you’re not making any mistakes. Practice doesn’t make perfect – practice makes permanent – so don’t waste your time practicing mistakes!

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academy in Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 1 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

© 2011, Tom Serb

How to Practice Your Musical Instrument was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

On this issue, guitar players tend to fall into one of the following groups:

1. Some guitarists almost never use a metronome in their guitar practice routines.
2. Others always (or almost always) practice guitar with a metronome.

When the guitarists in the first group are  asked about why they practice guitar without a metronome, often say that they want to avoid having to stick to a rigid tempo while playing guitar. They claim that not practicing guitar with a metronome helps their guitar playing to be more expressive and musical. Others in this group simply just don’t think much about the metronome.

The guitarists in the second group (those who practice guitar with a metronome almost all the time) will usually tell you that the metronome is key to getting big results from practicing guitar. Therefore, these guitarists believe it is essential to practice everything to a metronome to develop tight rhythm guitar playing skills, increase guitar speed and track musical progress.

Which Group Of Guitar Players Are You In?

Fact is both of the above belief systems are incomplete and misleading ways to approach guitar practicing. Here is why:

You need to alternate between practicing guitar both with and without the metronome, but to be effective you need to do so in a strategic way, not a random one. You must have a diverse set of targeted guitar practice techniques and you must know when and how to applythe use (or non-use) of the metronome to each one to successfully overcome every guitar playing challenge you face. When it comes to practicing guitar with a metronome, there are times when using it is necessary and there are other times when the metronome will distract you from improving in the areas you need to master.

There are multiple ways of using a metronome in your guitar practice routines. Consciously choosing “not” to use a metronome “sometimes” is one type of such strategy.  It is not enough to simply decide to practice guitar with a metronome a certain percentage of your practice time, such as 50% with and 50% without.  To get the most benefit from using a metronome, you need to know when, how and why to use it (or not use it) depending on what goals you are trying to achieve in a given practice session.

Although the complete list of strategies for using a metronome in your guitar practice sessions is beyond the scope of this article, I want to share with you several of the most important roles that the metronome should play in your guitar practicing, and also explain when and why to avoid using it.  These ideas will help you to get much faster results in your guitar playing.

How To Use A Metronome To “Test” Your Guitar Playing

Contrary to popular belief, practicing guitar with a metronome does not help you to “improve” your guitar technique or “increase” your guitar speed.  As I discuss in this free mini course on how to increase guitar speed, there are specific elements that go into guitar speed that must be trained and refined, often at super slow speeds without the metronome.  The metronome is then used mainly as a test to establish how well you have mastered these elements. The speed at which you can play will indicate whether or not you need to do additional practicing (without using the metronome) to overcome the technical flaws preventing you from playing guitar as fast as you want.

So, before you start using a metronome to “measure your improvement” in speed, you need to spend a substantial amount of time refining the fundamental technical components that make guitar speed possible (without using the metronome).  This goes totally against the conventional wisdom of practicing everything to a metronome in order to improve your guitar technique, but is a much more effective way of developing this skill (check out the aforementioned free mini course to fully understand why this is true and how you should practice to build guitar speed).In fact, it is this belief that more work with the metronome is the key to overcoming one’s guitar speed or technique plateau that keeps many guitarists frustrated with their lack of guitar playing progress.

How To Use A Metronome To Improve Your Rhythm Guitar Playing

The guitar players who never (or very rarely) practice guitar using a metronome say that they want to have the freedom of not having to stick to a rigid tempo in order to be more expressive with the music they are playing. Although this style of guitar playing has its place in music (and we’ll discuss this more a little later), most people who only practice guitar without the metronome typically struggle whenever they do have to play in strict time. It is important to be able to play by varying the tempo, dynamics and other musical elements for expressive reasons, but it is equally as important to be able to lock perfectly in time with a particular tempo. If you have always stayed away from practicing playing guitar to a metronome for the reasons mentioned above, chances are that your timing needs improvement.

Unlike the concept of guitar speed, practicing guitar with a metronome is a very critical part of what actually “develops” your ability to play guitar tight in time.  As you play, you can tell easily if your guitar playing is in time if you can make the sound of the metronome click “disappear” on most (or all) of the strong beats of the music.  If you are playing in perfect time, the notes you are playing will line up precisely on top of the metronome click, creating an illusion that the click has become silent or has disappeared.  If you can achieve this goal, you are making excellent progress.

How (And Why) To Practice Guitar Without A Metronome To Improve Your Guitar Phrasing

One problem that guitarists who use a metronome often run into, is a tendency to come up with melodies and lead guitar phrases mostly in “straight” divisions of the beat, such as long streams of sixteenth notes, triplets and quarter notes.  Even though the playing may sound good and be in time, the phrasing can begin to sound somewhat robotic and predictable, even if you use different scales.  One solution to this problem is to practice a guitar phrasing technique known as “rubato”.  This soloing technique refers to intentionally playing lead guitar melodies without a clear rhythm by expanding and suddenly contracting the duration of pitches.

Please note that there is a big and easily noticeable difference between playing in the style of rubato and the playing “not being in time.” One is a cool guitar phrasing technique and the other is a result of poor rhythmic control.  When you play using rubato, it is obvious that the notes of the phrase “intentionally” do not stick to any predetermined rhythm and the phrasing sounds very cool and expressive as a result.  In contrast, if you attempt to play notes that are or should be played in a strict rhythmic pattern but are not able to play in time, the music then has no sense of rubato and simply sounds “out of time”.

To learn more about rubato technique and hear exactly how you should practice it, watch this free guitar phrasing and soloing lesson.

As you can see, always practicing guitar ‘with’ a metronome or always practicing ‘without’ a metronome will limit your ability to reach your full potential as a guitar player. You now know that there are specific times when you should be using it and other specific times when you shouldn’t.

Ultimately, the metronome is only one of many guitar practice tools that should be used “when necessary” to overcome specific guitar playing problems.  The way each tool is to be used depends on the musical goals you are trying to reach and the specific problems you are trying to overcome.  If you lack experience in knowing which guitar practice strategies and tools to use, work with a proven guitar teacher who can guide you towards making your guitar practicing more effective.

To learn more about how to practice guitar effectively, download this free 110 page eBook on how to practice guitar correctly.

About the author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful online guitar teacher, professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He teaches guitar players around the world in his electric guitar lessons online.  Visit www.tomhess.net to get free guitar practice tips, assessments, surveys, mini courses, and to read more guitar articles.

How To Fix Common Guitar Practice Problems With And Without A Metronome was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Good news and bad news:

The good news is that virtually anyone can learn to play guitar fast.  In addition, you can directly control the practicing process to make it more effective and achieve your guitar speed goals in a lot less time than it takes an average guitar player.

The bad news is that most guitar players (those who can’t yet play guitar fast) are totally on the wrong track in their approach to increasing guitar speed.  I see this all the time when working with new guitar students who come to me wanting to improve their guitar playing.  The typical path to increasing one’s guitar speed is usually limited to “starting to practice slowly with a metronome and gradually increasing speed in small increments.”  Such a tactic can be effective early on in the process of learning new guitar exercises, but if you rely on it exclusively to develop your maximum guitar speed it will lead to plateaus and frustration.  Here are a few reasons why:

1. This approach shifts most of your focus on trying to “move your hands/fingers faster.”  However, the concept of moving your fingers faster is a tiny, insignificant part of the big picture of what it takes to improve in order to build guitar speed.  The most important elements of guitar speed remain neglected and under-practiced with this guitar practice method.  As a result, the practice sessions often turn into a series of impatient attempts to break through a current guitar speed plateau.
2. There is a large number of different elements that require attention and training in order to learn to play guitar fast, including: two- hand synchronization, picking articulation, tension control, mental processing speed, hand endurance at fast tempos, guitar speed with a single technique vs. guitar speed with integrating a variety of guitar techniques and many more.  Each of these ‘guitar speed components’ need unique practice strategies in order to be mastered effectively.  Relying exclusively on ‘any single’ guitar speed practicing strategy (such as the most common one described above) is not going to help you improve all of the guitar technique elements that are needed to build guitar speed.

Great guitar players who can play guitar fast were able to successfully master all of the above mentioned elements of guitar speed whether they consciously realized it or not.  You need to do the same in order to increase your guitar speed to your maximum speed potential.  If you do not know how to begin the process of practicing these skills in the most effective ways, check out this free mini course about learning to play guitar fast.

To help you expand and improve upon the conventional approach for building guitar speed, here are several guidelines to follow

Get specific about what problems you are having with trying to increase your guitar speed.

Simply saying “I can’t play guitar fast” is not specific enough.  Being unable to play guitar fast is only a symptom of a more complex problem that usually has several causes.  As you have seen above, the root of your guitar speed limitations can exist in any or all of the specific technical elements that make up the multidimensional skill of “playing guitar fast.”  Knowing exactly what is causing your problem is the first step to solving it.  When you learn exactly what is holding you back, you can focus your guitar practice sessions on the specific problems that needs to be overcome.  Having your guitar playing analyzed by an expert guitar teacher is the fastest way to get this required level of clarity.

Use a variety of practice strategies for increasing your guitar speed.

As your guitar playing skill level evolves, so will your specific guitar technique challenges.  Therefore, the practice techniques you use at each stage of your guitar playing must evolve as well in order to be effective.  There is no such thing as ‘one’ ultimate guitar practice routine for increasing your guitar speed.  Of course there are approaches to practicing guitar that are far more effective than others, but the way you organize your guitar speed training routines should be unique to your specific guitar technique and guitar speed challenges at any given time.  You can see many examples of effective guitar speed building strategies that I use with my students by studying this free mini course on how to build guitar speed.

Practice integrating your guitar techniques together to avoid sounding like a “guitar speed robot.”

Over the years of teaching hundreds of guitar players to improve their guitar technique (as well as other musical skills), I have found that most guitarists spend very little time applying and integrating their musical skills and guitar techniques in particular.  This results in lack of musical freedom to express yourself completely and fully in any musical context.

When it comes to increasing your guitar speed, most guitarists typically focus on becoming faster with only one technique at a time.  For example, you may practice your sweep picking for 15 minutes, then move on to 15 minutes of legato, followed by 15 minutes of 2 hand tapping. Although this approach will help you to improve at these techniques in isolation, you also need to specifically practice using all of these techniques together in the same way that you will find these techniques used in real guitar solos.  Neglecting to do this will make your guitar playing sound unnatural and rather robotic as you will struggle to play consistently well with using a variety of guitar techniques at once.

Although guitar speed is clearly only one out of many musical areas that must be mastered in order to become a truly expressive and creative musician, it is a highly desired skill that most guitar players do not have.  Applying the suggestions above during your guitar practice sessions and following the guidelines from this free guitar speed training mini course will help you greatly to build as much guitar speed as you desire for your specific guitar playing goals.

About the author:
Tom Hess is a professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He teaches guitar players around the world via online guitar lessons.  Visit http://www.tomhess.net to get free guitar playing tips, assessments, surveys, mini courses, and to read more guitar playing articles.

How to Play Guitar Fast – Avoiding Critical Mistakes In Learning To Increase Your Guitar Speed was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I think we would all agree that this farmer, who has lost his patience so completely, is also quite ignorant. He is ignorant of the laws that govern the growing of corn, and does not understand the time frame involved, or the level of consistent care that his fields and crops require in order to grow a successful crop of corn.

We would also agree that this ridiculous example probably does not really ever occur, no farmer is that dumb! But, when it comes to guitar players, I can tell you, it happens all the time!

I have often read comments by guitar players about the value of having “patience” in relation to practicing guitar. Usually, the statement is made in the context of an overall lament that they themselves are sorely lacking in this acknowledged virtue, and, while hoping someday to enjoy its benefits, nonetheless recommend that you yourself do not delay in practicing its lofty tenets.

Most people feel somewhat guilty as they admit they lack patience. They assume that the lack of patience is evidence of some type of character flaw or moral failing, and that he who can bear the ups and downs of life (and guitar practice) with patience is certainly a superior type of person.

Such ruminations are childish, and unenlightened. More importantly, they will not get you any closer to “having patience” yourself, and that is the purpose of me putting my fingers to the keyboard to write this essay – to bring you closer to that necessary but little understood state of having patience. No matter what endeavor of life you find yourself in, when you have patience, you have power.

You Can’t Get Patience, It Just Happens

I am going to show you that there really is no such thing as “having patience.” Patience is something that is there when other things are there. Patience is there when knowledge and understanding are there. If knowledge and understanding is not there, if ignorance is there, as in the case of the farmer above, then patience will not be there either. I say this because I am sick and tired of hearing guitar students say “I get frustrated when I practice. I have no patience.” No, it is not patience they lack, it is knowledge and understanding.

The farmer who wants to grow a crop of corn needs to understand the cause and effect relationship of all the elements involved in doing that. He needs to understand about preparing the soil, watering the seeds, and how, over time, these seeds will germinate and grow into corn. He needs to understand that his job is merely to cooperate intelligently with a set of natural forces that have their own power, work their own magic, and do it on their own timetable for the most part. Of course, there are things he can do to optimize the conditions in which these forces are working so that they are more powerful and produce better and perhaps even somewhat faster results. This is all part of being a good farmer.

It is the same for guitar players. When we sit down to practice, which is the process of building skill on the guitar, we are, whether we know it or not, working with, or against, a set of natural forces, as natural as the ones that grow corn. If we understand these forces, if we know how to work with them, we will always see our skills growing day by day, as a result of the efforts we make. This will happen as surely as the good farmer watching his corn grow over time.

No part of the process will surprise or dismay us. We will not expect things to happen that are impossible to happen, and we will not prevent things from happening by doing the wrong things. We will not have hissy fits because we are not seeing results, because when we know how to practice correctly, we will always see results. We really will not need any patience, because there will be nothing to become impatient about.

Saint Jamie

There is an old saying used to describe particularly obnoxious people. We say “he would try the patience of a saint.” We usually think of saints as extremely patient people – they never “lose it,” no matter how frustrating things get.

Well, when I practice, there are times when I do nothing but fail, over and over, hundreds, even thousands of times. Often, I am trying to do something, and I just can’t do it. I may think I have it down solid, and I go to record it, and it falls apart! Do I start yelling? Do I start crying?

No, I don’t. And believe me, I’m no saint! Except maybe when it comes to guitar. Maybe with guitar I am a saint because I never lose it. Instead, when I have a problem, I study it. Whatever it is, whatever has happened, whatever I have just messed up that I thought I had solid, I study it, objectively, like a scientist.

I try with all my powers to understand the cause and effect relationship of how I am practicing this music, and how I am attempting to do it (including fingering, positioning, etc) and I begin to experiment with new approaches based on my investigations. I do this because I know there is a cause and effect relationship between my efforts and my results. If it’s not working, then there is something I am not seeing yet, and instead of “losing my patience” I simply focus my attention more strongly, I look more closely to see what I am obviously missing.

And I can tell you, I never fail. It may take me weeks, months, or years, but I always get what I want.

My attitude, which looks to others like “patience” is simply a result of my knowledge of the process in which I am engaged, that’s all. And so, we can define “patience” in this way:

Patience is a state of relaxed, alert, and expectant composure that derives from engaging in a goal directed activity of which we have complete knowledge and understanding of the cause and effect dynamics of that process.

That’s it. That is what patience is. To put it in simple language, “patience” is what you get when you are smart, and “impatience” is what you get when you are ignorant!

Patience is characterized by a continuation of effort toward a goal, based on our understanding of what necessary efforts must be made, and impatience is surrender, the ceasing of our efforts because we simply don’t know what to do.

For this reason, I say to all sincere seekers of guitar playing ability: learn the science of correct practice. Empower yourself with the knowledge and understanding of the laws that control how the fingers learn to make the movements called “playing the guitar.”

If you do, you may very well have people tell you they see a halo around your head when you are practicing guitar. After awhile, you will certainly have people tell you that you play like an angel!

Copyright 2010 Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles.

Patience and Guitar Practice was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

What’s sometimes overlooked is that it’s very easy to create “chord melody” finger style instrumental pieces out of a blues format. You’ve already done this with our last “Turning Practice into Play” lesson (the Drop D Happy Blues) and in this lesson you’ll have a new piece to add to your single-guitar instrumental music repertoire.

The song for this lesson, which I’m calling the Quick Change Chromatic Blues just to give it a name, is one I wrote specifically for the upcoming Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar. Like the Drop D Happy Blues, it’s designed to work on syncopation and timing in general. It’s both easier and harder than the first song in a couple of ways. Easier in that the bass is pretty much a single note (the root note of the given chord) throughout, but the melody provides ample opportunity to stretch and move the fingers about on the fretboard.

There are also some aspects of musicality to address – while the bass is pretty much the same throughout, there should be a bit of distinction between what we would think of as the song’s melody and what will pass as typical blues fills. More on that as we move along…

Let’s address a few basics first: the song is in E major and follows a twelve-bar blues format that most musicians refer to as the “quick change” blues. Typically a twelve-bar blues pattern in the key of E would use the following chords:

Measures 1 – 4: E

Measures 5 – 6: A

Measures 7 – 8: E

Measure 9: B

Measure 10: A

Measure 11: E

Measure 12: Turnaround (meaning getting back to the B so you can start the song again)

In a “quick change” blues, the second measure usually goes to the “IV” chord, which in the key of E would be A. Then the third and fourth measures are back on the “I” chord, which would be E in this example.

Let’s take a look at the first two measures and see how this will play out. Don’t forget that blues is played in swing eighths. If you’ve forgotten about how to do that, don’t worry! We’ve just created a new “mini-lesson help guide” here at Guitar Noise for just this purpose! Go here to get a quick refresher (complete with audio) on swing eighths rhythm.

And when you’re done with that, you can get back to focusing on this song:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Let’s talk a moment here about notes, fingering, melodies and making use of open strings. The E note in the melody line at the end of the first measure can be played at many places along the neck of the guitar. There’s the open high E (first) string, obviously, but you can also play that particular note at the fifth fret of the B string, the ninth fret of the G string, the fourteenth fret of the D string and even the nineteenth fret of the A string if you’re so inclined. Which note is the “right one?”

A lot of that choice depends on you but part of it is simple logic. If you play the first three notes of the melody starting with the G note at the eighth fret of the B string (as shown in the above tablature) it just makes sense to start with your middle finger because then your ring finger and index finger are in perfect position to play the G# (ninth fret of the B) and B (seventh fret of the high E). But you’ve got a choice now as to where to play that E note we were just discussing.

Perhaps the most logical place to play it is at the ninth fret of the G string. Your fingers are, as mentioned, in a perfect place to do so. But I’ve chosen the open high E string for two purely personal reasons. First off, I like the way it sounds. Maybe I’m just an “open ringing strings” kind of guy (that may have a lot to do with starting out on an acoustic twelve-string guitar ages ago), who knows? Letting the note ring out and decay naturally, even while the new phrase of the second measure begins, is pleasing to my ears.

The second reason is a little more practical – using the open string means that I’ve bought myself a bit of time to shift my fingers down the neck for the next phrase of the song. I am not the world’s fastest guitarist by any stretch of the imagination and I like to give my fingers a head start whenever the opportunity presents itself.

And even though this is a reasonably simple song, there’s quite a bit going on here. Take the bass notes, for instance. Even though it’s probably the easiest bass line you could possibly come across, you want to think about just how you want to play it. You can hear on the MP3 in the last example that I use a bit of palm muting on the bass notes, keeping the bass fairly crisp and staccato, in contrast to letting the melody notes ring out. Again, this is my choice and your personal musical tastes may guide you to play it differently.

Turning our attention to the second measure, my original intent with this song was to have it serve as a practical use of the age-old “one finger one fret” exercises that we all used at some point in our playing history. If your index finger plays the first C note (fifth fret of the G string), then you can use your middle finger on C# (sixth fret), your ring finger on the F# (seventh fret of the B string) and your pinky on the G (eighth fret of the B). But again, that’s just one possible approach. You could, for instance, decide to use a series of short slides, sliding the index finger from the fifth fret to the sixth fret on the G and either your ring finger or middle finger to slide from the seventh to eighth fret of the B string. Hammer-ons are another possibility.

The third measure was designed to give beginning guitarists a bit of work on rolling the index finger:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Begin the phrase the middle finger to fret the G (third fret of the high E) and use your ring finger for the G# at the fourth fret. Next you’ll hit the open high E string and let it ring out while you play the C# at the second fret of the B string. To do so, you’ll need to fret the note cleanly with the tip of your index finger. After you’ve done so, flatten out the index finger to get the F# at the second fret of the high E string. You can then either remove your index finger and pick the note of the open high E string or perform a pull-off with the index finger to sound the note.

To get the final note of this phrase, you can simply play it as notated or you can choose to use a slide or a hammer to move from the C# (second fret of the B string) to the D (third fret of the B).

Measures five and six involve bouncing your fingers across the first six frets of the two high strings:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here we’re once again making use of the open strings to move our fingers around. The first time you hit the open high E, shift your fingers so your index finger is positioned at the second fret. Doing so will make it easy to play the A (fifth fret of the high E) with your pinky.

Likewise, use the second strike of the open high E string as a chance to reposition your fingers so that your middle finger is poised over the third fret. This means your pinky will be able to nail the Bb at the sixth fret. Take advantage of the next-to-last hit of the open high E to shift back and you’ll have no trouble getting the F# at the second fret just before this phrase is over.

Be sure to take note that the first three notes of the fifth measure are triplets and not swing eighths. This means that you are supposed to play them evenly through the first beat of the measure. Don’t treat the first hammer-on (which could just as easily be played as a slide, if you prefer) as a grace note – give it its full rhythmic due.

Also be sure to notice that the third note of that triplet is tied, so it is in essence a full beat (the last third of the first beat and the first two-thirds of the second beat). Whenever you find yourself faces with a combination of triplets and swing eighths, be smart and count it out loud to yourself in order to get it right. Here’s how you would count out the fifth measure:

I threw in a traditional blues riff to serve as a fill during the seventh and eighth measures:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This is probably the trickiest part of the whole song, so if you can work your way through measure seven it’s pretty much smooth sailing from here. You may find using your ring finger for the initial D note (third fret of the B string) to be very helpful. Doing so puts your middle finger right over the second fret so you put it down on the A note (second fret of the G string), hit it and then slide up two frets to the B note. Now your index finger is at the third fret position, which is exactly where you want it to be. Be sure to keep your middle finger in place at the fourth fret of the G string when you hit that D note (index finger on the third fret of the B string) so that you are ready for the slide back down to the A at the second fret. Then you can simply remove the finger normally or perform a pull-off to get the note of the open G string.

Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet, though. You need to hit the open G once more and then immediately hammer your index finger on to the first fret to get the G# that starts the eighth measure. This open G is a true grace note. It’s almost like hitting the open G string was a mistake that you corrected as soon as you heard it.

Take these last two measures slowly and deliberately at first. Don’t even worry about the count as much as getting comfortable knowing how and what your fingers are supposed to do to perform this fill. Once you feel less anxious about how to play it, work on the fill at a very slow and even tempo, counting out the triplets (“one and ah two and ah three and ah four and ah”) as you do so. The hammer-on at the start of measure eight should all happen as you say “one.”

As you gain confidence in playing this riff at speed, back up two measures and play the entire phrase (measures five through eight) at a slow, steady beat and then gradually build up your speed again.

The final five measures may seem a little mundane compared to what you just went through, but hopefully there will be some interesting musical twists for you to enjoy:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You want to start by fingering a B7 chord (x21202) but since you won’t be playing the B or high E strings, don’t even worry about putting any fingers there. After a brief four-string arpeggio, slide the B7 shape, all three fingers, one fret up the neck. Believe it or not, this is C7. With your picking hand, pinch the A and G strings with your thumb and middle finger, respectively, and use your index finger to pick the D string. Then slide the whole shape back to B7 and repeat the picking pattern.

And, having just taken a short break from the “all quarter notes all root notes all the time” bass line, you get right back into it in measure ten. The melody line uses only the notes at either the open B and high E string or the second fret of both those strings. Again, compared to what you’ve done up to this point, you should find this surprisingly easy and painless.

Measure eleven is an interesting demonstration of converging musical lines. The bass notes climb up from E to G# to A to A# and then B at the start of measure twelve while the melody notes move down from E to D (natural) to C# to C natural and then to B again. It’s the first time that the melody is all quarter notes so take care not to speed them up! Inertia can do that to you!

You might find it easiest to finger the second pair of notes in measure eleven – the G# in the bass and the D in the melody – with your middle finger and index finger, respectively. Then slide your index finger down to the second fret of the B string for the C# and use the open A string for the bass note. For the final pair of notes in that measure, use your middle finger for the A# note (first fret of the A string) in the bass and your ring finger for the C (first fret of the B string) in the melody. This allows you to slide the middle finger up to get the B note (second fret of the A string) and also puts you in position to fret the low three notes of the B7 chord again. A little planning certainly doesn’t hurt.

Let’s try out the whole thing and see how it goes, shall we?

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little blues number. You should feel free to experiment and work out your own melodies and fills and create solo guitar blues pieces of your own. It’s not all that hard if you remember to start out nice and easy. As you pick up more and more techniques and ideas, your songs will start to reflect your new skills, too.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Turning Practice Into Play #2 – “Quick Change Chromatic Blues” was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The jazz player needs a vast and extensive range of tools, because the music they play is based on sophisticated scales, and those scales are used to generate extremely complex chord structures. There are hundreds if not thousands of chord forms to learn, and a great number of scale forms all over the neck, in every key.

From a musical standpoint, Jazz soloing is about as complex as it gets for improvised styles. A very large number of scales, in all keys, and all positions, must be learned and absorbed into the mind and the fingers. A high level of refined technique, in the left hand and in the pick hand is required to play the scales and all the licks that come from them.

For the jazz player, scales, chords, and arpeggios are all one thing, and all of these tools in their seemingly endless forms are firmly in the head and hands (and heart!) of a great jazz player.

All of this knowledge of the harmonic potential of the fingerboard also gives you the tools for arranging music on and for the guitar, including playing chord melody style. Many players earnestly wish they could do something other than just strum chords, or just play single notes leads. This type of study is the path for them.

Although there is going to be repetition of patterns as we go about learning all this musical material, there is still a tremendous amount of material to study. Many great players have filled large volumes with the material they practice, and have published it for other players to study (i.e. Ted Greene, “Chord Chemistr). You can fill a room with such material, and have a lifetime of study ahead of you, which is very fortunate for you if you love this kind of thing. You will become an awesome player with a very large knowledge base, and never have to worry about having nothing to do!

Of course, we learn to use all these tools as we acquire them, step by step, and song by song. There are a large number of “standards”, songs and pieces that every jazz player knows, and can play and improvise on. All of these must be learned, although there is a “core” of material that you are going to find yourself playing in the majority of professional situations you find yourself in.

A subset of the jazz player is the “pop player”, and many jazz lovers will make a part of their living by playing in bands where pop music and standards are required. The setting will often be club dates, weddings, and social events.

Five years of study, averaging around 2 or more hours a day (hopefully more!) are required to get up and running as a player in the jazz/pop genre. Then, it takes about ten years of 3+ hours a day to fully acquire the use of these tools, and a lifetime of continuing study and refinement if you want to be among the greats. A high degree of refined technique in both hands must be developed as well.

So, you have to decide – do you want to be a brain surgeon, or a jazz guitarist? Probably becoming a brain surgeon will be a bit less of a commitment!

The Bottom Line on Jazz Guitar Playing:

Time Required: 3-5+  years of 3 – 6+ hours a day

Tools: extensive  knowledge of scales and associated modes and arpeggios, advanced ability in special techniques associated with the style. Advanced picking technique.

Recommended Resource:

Our free fingerboard harmony course

Scales and Modes by Arnie Berle

GuitarPrinciples “The 6 Six Essential Major Scales With Modes & Arpeggios”

The Classical Player

People often consider the classical guitar as the most difficult and challenging style to learn and master. I am not sure if that is true, but it is certainly a contender!

The term “classical guitar” is simply the name given to the first and original style of guitar, which began about 200 years ago, when the guitar took its present form as the six string instrument we know today. It had grown out of a long tradition of plucked instruments going back to ancient times, and, whether as the lyre or the lute, always extremely popular in the cultures where it appeared.

Because of its long tradition in so many forms in so many cultures, a very wide range of music from many centuries is played on the “classical guitar”. Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic/Spanish and Modern are the main genres of music played on what is known as the “Classical Guitar”. So, one of the distinguishing features of playing the classical guitar is the fact that our repertoire spans many centuries, rather than the relatively limited time frame encompassed by the repertoire of other styles of guitar.

However, you do not have to love or desire to play classical (or “serious” music as it is sometimes called) in order to desire or benefit from classical training. The study of any style adds something precious to the depth of our artistry, and many people study classical guitar simply for the advanced use of the right hand fingers it gives you, as well as the intimate knowledge of the fingerboard’s musical potential, an asset in any style. Howard Morgen, who I studied with to learn jazz and fingerboard harmony, is such a player, having studied classical guitar so as to apply the right hand abilities to his 7 string Jazz guitar and the jazz standard repertoire.

The classical guitar has always pushed the limits of what is possible on the guitar in a musical way, and the technique required to play its repertoire is precise and unforgiving. You can get away with imperfect or homegrown technique in many styles, but not with the classical guitar.

Because the physical technique required to play the repertoire is extremely precise, getting that technique requires either an intuitive knowledge of how to do correct practice to develop technique, or exposure to an effective pedagogical system that will teach you how to do that.

The highest levels of ability in both hands are required by an advanced player, and even for the beginner and intermediate student a firm foundation is essential, or playing will be a struggle and progress will be impossible. A correct approach to practice and an absolutely relaxed and comfortable technique must be developed from the beginning, and this is very, very often not the case, especially with the adult student.

In my own experience, I never found a teacher who could do much more than give me music to play, and perhaps tell me which fingers to use. There is more information available today, but the real information for how to develop to the highest levels of ability is lacking in every method I know of – most methods are merely collections of pieces and exercises that would sound great if you knew the secrets of mastering them.

That is why I created the “GuitarPrinciples Classical/Fingerstyle Foundation Course”. It contains concepts and methods not found anywhere else, and they have been proven to work for the average student, of any age. You can see students from this course here.

A moderate practice schedule of 30min, 5 times a week can get you on the path of playing classical guitar. You will be playing nice sounding pieces within a few months, and, if you follow my methods, you will continue to develop nicely for as long as play and practice.

To play the classical guitar at a high level, meaning, being able to play the more complex repertoire well, requires 3 to 6 hours a day for about 10 years. However, anyone can enjoy playing the classical guitar as a richly rewarding hobby that they CAN be good at (just like tennis or golf), playing the pieces they have developed with a professional polish IF they learn the methods professionals use.

The Bottom Line On Classical  Guitar Playing:

Time Required: Adult Student – 30 min/day, 1 to 2 years to acquire solid foundation and playing ability through beginning level, ready and able to make further progress.

Tools: note reading, a solid foundation of technique in both hands, a firm understanding of how to practice effectively, a developing ability to play in a completely relaxed way.

Professional Level: 3 to 6 hours a day for 10 years.

Recommended Resource:

The priniciples

The classical course

How to master a scale

The Learning Curve of Various Styles of Guitar (Part 4: Jazz and Classical) was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

A piece of music in 4/4 time (meaning four beats to the bar) may commonly be expressed in a straight eighth feel, a syncopated feel, a 12/8 feel, or a 16-beat feel.

Straight Eighth Feel

Each note is kept to exactly the same length in straight eighth feel. The result can be verbalised like this:

“One and two and three and four and”

It is normally best played with all down strokes.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

A shuffle pattern is often applied to this in blues, R&B and rock music, emphasising the backbeats (beats 2 and 4 – also called snare beats as they are commonly picked out by the snare drum):

“One and two and three and four and”

On rhythm guitar this is often reinforced by adding the sixth note of the scale to a power chord like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

12/8 Feel

This is the one I find people need the most help with. First of all I recommend forgetting the number 12 – it’s just too big a number to count. Counting “One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve” every bar is likely to just result in you spitting all over the front row of your audience as you play!

Better to go back to the description of straight eighths and instead of dividing each of the four main beats into two equal halves, divide them into three equal thirds. This is best verbalised:

“One-and-a two-and-a three-and-a four-and-a”

And should, except at really fast tempo, be played with all down strokes to keep it smooth.

It is the staple rhythmic diet of slow blues (Jimi Hendrix’ ”Red House”), some soul and gospel (Sam Cooke “Bring it on Home”) and 8-bar country blues like “Key to the Highway” by Big Bill Broonzy.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Swing Feel

There is a great deal of discussion about exactly what constitutes a swing feel but, in the simplest of terms, swing rhythm differs from straight time by making the first of each pair of notes slightly longer at the expense of the second.

Strangely enough, this is done through triplets, like those you counted out in the 12/8 feel. But instead of playing all three notes of the triplet, you just play the first and last notes of each set. Swing, in its simplest form, can be verbalised like this:

“One  a-two a-three a-four a-”

It is almost always better to play swing rhythms with alternating strokes:

Down up-Down up-Down up-Down up-

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

16-Beat Feel

Most commonly found in funk, jazz, disco and heavy rock, the sixteen beat feel is probably the last of these four feels to try and master.

Again, the notes are all of even duration. This time each of the main four beats are subdivided into four lesser beats. As with the advice on the 12/8 feel, don’t try counting from 1 – 16! Better to think of it as:

“One-e-and-a   two-e-and-a   three-e-and-a   four-e-and-a”

And play it with a nice free right hand, strumming evenly, strictly alternating up and down strokes.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

We have barely scratched the surface with this article, but I hope it will inspire guitar players to look deeper into this aspect of their playing. A great way to expand your understanding is simply to try to figure out which of these four categories the music you are listening to falls into. There are, of course, other time signatures, feels and many sub-varieties of those listed above; but you may be surprised just how many popular songs have rhythms that fall into one of these four basic categories of rhythmic feel.

The author welcomes feedback from guitarists and teachers alike. You’ll find more such articles plus loads of other free resources for guitar teaching on www.teachguitar.com

Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems Part 3 – Left-brain Left Behind was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

With musicians, just talk about the difference between “practice” and “play.” We all love to play our guitars, but few can hear the word “practice” without experiencing a twinge of some sort. But the reality is that practicing is, at heart, playing one’s instrument. You’re just playing with a specific focus.

Part of the dislike for practice stems from the perception that practice is not “fun” like playing is. But that’s something you can fix with a little imagination on your part. To help, I’ve put together this lesson (and others to follow) that give you a song specifically made up to help practice different techniques or ideas. Since we’ve recently had a focus on finger picking guitar, and since just about everyone loves the blues, your first lesson is a song called Drop D Happy Blues. It may remind you of Taj Mahal’s rendition of Fishing Blues or even Buckets of Rain by Bob Dylan. And that’s a good thing if it does, because then you’ll be noticing how this made-up-specifically-for-practice song is something you can easily do on your own.

We’ll be using Drop D Happy Blues to work on Travis style finger picking as well as to get a better handle on the ideas of syncopation and anticipation, not to mention working on timing in general. This song will also give you a workout with “two finger hammer-ons,” like those used in the Amazing Grace lesson here at Guitar Noise. And if that’s not enough, we’ll also touch on the use of two-string harmony – playing pairs of strings much in the way we did with Bookends. Not to bad from one fairly simple song, no?

And I want to stress that word – “simple” – if for no other reason than to point out you probably liked it! Seriously, I’ve tried to make this first “practice song” one that most of you should be able to handle fairly easily but give it some challenging aspects as well.

Something else I tried to do is to make this a “multi-purpose” arrangement, meaning that it will (hopefully) work equally well as a “chord melody” style song, for those of you who don’t sing, and as an accompaniment, should you decide to create your own melody to sing over the guitar part. And please feel free to do so!

First things first, though, and that means getting our guitars in Drop D tuning. We’ve run into this tuning in a few of our Guitar Noise lessons, such as Neil Young’s Harvest Moon. To place your guitar in Drop D, you want to lower the low E (sixth) string down one whole step to D. You can do this by means of a tuner or even your ear. Just be certain you’re tuning the string lower in pitch and not higher! If you’re using your ear, you can match the new note of D against the normal open D (fourth) string (it will be an octave lower). Matching the twelfth fret harmonic of the newly tuned sixth string to the open fourth string will also do the trick, as will matching the note of the open A (fifth) string to the seventh fret of the newly tuned sixth string.

You may wonder why we’re going through the trouble of using Drop D tuning in the first place! Believe it or not, it’s to make things easier on your picking while you concentrate on other things. Throughout much of the song, you’ll be using your thumb to play a steady four-beat-to-the-measure bass line that simply alternates between the new lowest open D (sixth) string and the regular open D of the fourth string, like this:

For many players the trickiest part of finger picking, especially Travis style picking, is dealing with the picking that gets played with the fingers. More often than not these notes fall on the offbeats, creating syncopation and anticipations in the overall picking pattern. So, as silly as it sounds, you want to take a few moments to get comfortable playing this in a very steady rhythm. Don’t worry about speed but concentrate instead on being able to count and hold the beat steady and sure.

Keeping the beat steady is vital when you add the melody line of the song to the mix. It’s not at all difficult, but if you’re not familiar or comfortable with playing on the offbeat, it may take a few tries to get it right. Here is the first phrase, which is four measures long. Notice that the first and third measures are identical while the second and fourth mirror each other in rhythm even though the notes are different:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I’ve added the count to the first line so you can see and hear how this plays out. For picking, you may find it best to use your middle finger to play any notes on the high E (first) string and your index finger to pick the notes on the B string. But you can also alternate your fingers, using the middle finger and index finger to pick alternate notes. You can certainly also add your ring finger to the mix as well or simply use one single finger to pick all the notes. Which way is best? That depends on who you ask. But it truly doesn’t hurt to be comfortable playing it using any of those finger picking suggestions.

For fretting the notes, though, you’ll probably find it best to start with your index finger on the seventh fret, which will allow you to use either your ring finger or your pinky for the notes at the tenth fret. At the second measure, using the middle finger for the first note (sixth fret of the B string) allows you to hammer onto the seventh fret with your ring finger while keeping your index finger in the perfect position to play the last note at the fifth fret of the high E (first) string. Similarly, in the fourth measure, using the middle finger to start with means you’ll have both the index and ring fingers in the right spot for the second and third notes of the melody.

Another option worth considering is using a slide instead of either the hammer-on or pull-off. You’d start the second measure, for instance, with your ring finger on the sixth fret of the B string and slide it up to the seventh fret. Likewise in the fourth measure you’d use your index finger for the first note (sixth fret of the B string again) and slide the index finger down to the fifth fret of the same string for the second melody note of that measure.

Whichever way you decide to play it (and I, of course, encourage you to try each one), the important thing here is to keep the timing correct. For whatever reason, many beginners seem to associate slurs, such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and bends, with grace notes and tend to play all slurs as grace notes instead of giving them their full rhythmic value. The melody for both the second and fourth measures uses the same rhythm. First there is an eighth note rest, during which the bass note of the open low D (sixth) string is played. Then you get the first melody note during the second half of the first beat. The second melody note (the one created by the hammer-on, pull-off or slide) falls precisely at the second beat, coinciding with the playing of the open D of the fourth string. The third melody note falls between the second and third beat and is held over the final two beats of the measure. Be sure to count it out if you’re worried you’re not getting it correctly.

And just to give you more to practice, here is an alternate rhythm to use for both the second and fourth measures of this first phrase of our song:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here the first melody note of the second and fourth measures falls right on the first beat. The second note falls between the first and second beats and the third note occurs between beats two and three and is held for the rest of the measure.

The first phrase of this song is repeated. In the final MP3 of this lesson you’ll hear me play the first variation one time through and then the second. As always, you should feel free to mix and match as you see fit. Have fun playing around with the rhythm but do make it a point to tell yourself, “I’m playing this rhythm” and do so. After all, you want to be in charge of what you’re playing!

The second phrase begins on the fourth beat of the second repetition of Measure 4, kicking off with a two-finger hammer-on. It goes like this (I’m starting with the third measure of the first phrase, with the second rhythm variation, in the following example):

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

On the fourth beat that marks the end of the first phrase / beginning of the second phrase, you’re playing the open D note of the fourth string with your thumb, as you have been on every fourth beat of every measure up to this point. At the same time you strike the open fourth D string with your thumb, you want to play the open B and G strings. You’ll likely find it easiest to use your middle finger (on the B string) and index finger (on the G string) to do so. After striking all three strings on the fourth beat, you’ll want to perform a hammer-on on the B and G strings at the second half of the fourth beat. Use your index finger to get the D note (third fret of the B string) and your middle finger to get the B note (fourth fret of the G string).

Coming in ahead of the first beat in this manner is called an anticipation. We’ve run into this in many lessons here at Guitar Noise, from Three Marlenas to Man on the Moon. With this particular anticipation, though, you’ll notice that having the hammer-on take place on the second half of the fourth beat gives you a little space in which to get your finger ready on that low G note in the bass.

Using the two fingers on the appropriate notes as outlined earlier puts your ring finger or pinky in place to get the G note at the fifth fret of the low D (sixth) string and having all three fingers in place sets you up to play the rest of the measure with ease. The thumb will still be playing the same strings – the G note on the low D on the first and third beats and the open fourth string D on the second and fourth beats. Then it’s just a matter of adding the fingers.

And that will be a little tricky at first. The second full measure of this second phrase is probably the most involved part of the whole song, so take your time with it. Many players will find it easiest if they use their ring fingers to pick the open high E (first) string, the middle finger to pick the B string and the index finger to pick the G string. But quite a few will also find it simpler to use just the middle finger and index fingers for picking. And there will also be those who prefer to use the index finger to pick all three strings.

You’ll also get a chance to work on your two-finger hammer-ons a bit more as the phrase ends with a shift from the D and B notes to D and A (second fret of the G string). Again, you’ll want to make note of the timing and watch out for the anticipations.

Okay, there’s one final phrase to deal with and, compared to what you just went through, it should be somewhat easier;

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You start with a nice, single hit of the open A string and then play three easy harmony pairs on the high E (first) and G strings. Use your index finger for the high notes and your middle finger for the low notes. If you’d like, you can slide into the first pair of notes, as indicated in the notation and tablature. Doing so is usually easiest from two frets lower on the neck, so you’d start with your index finger on the third fret of the high E (first) string and your middle finger on the fourth fret of the G string.

In the second measure of this last phrase the harmony pairs shift to the B and D strings. Again, use your middle finger on the low notes but go with the ring finger for the higher notes on the B string. And you can also slide into the first pair again if you’d like.

You also get a chance to see if you can hit the offbeat without the aid of the steady bass notes. Notice that the third pair of notes in the second measure falls between the second and third beats of that measure. Finally you end up with the same two-finger hammer-on last seen at the end of the second phrase.

So far, so good! Let’s try putting it all together. We’ll run through the whole thing twice, extend the ending a little bit the second time through and then tack on a short little run of bass notes to give the piece an nice finish:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

That last chord, by the way, is an interesting open string voicing of D9. I hope that you have enjoyed this song lesson, even though it’s a song you’ve not heard before. Hopefully, it kind of sounds like some songs you have heard before!

And do remember the whole point of this exercise was to come up with a song that you could use to practice some different techniques, in this case the focus being Travis style finger picking (complete with playing off the beat and anticipations) and two-finger hammer-ons.  You may not think so at this stage, but this sort of thing you could have come up with on your own if you were so inclined. All I did was to take a few areas of practice and create a way to make that practice (hopefully) be a bit more fun.

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, we’ll try to work out some more “practice songs” for you. It’s easy enough to take other song styles as well as the techniques used in other songs you know and to incorporate them into an interesting and fun lesson. Let me know if that’s something of interest to you.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Turning Practice into Play #1 – “Drop D Happy Blues” was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Some players eschew single note lead playing and prefer to specialize in providing the rhythm for the band (a la Johnny Ramone). In this case, the style of music will dictate the demands of competency. Again, those demands will fall into two categories: technical and musical.

If one is playing blues based rock, then you need mastery of basic chords and the patterns and rhythms to which they are applied. Each pattern requires study, but these common patterns can be learned by anyone willing to put in the time and who has an idea of how to practice effectively. Traditionally, note reading is not required, and even if you are reading, you will need to see and, more importantly, hear other people do it, and copy them. Six months to a year of one to two hours a day will equip you for this type of playing.

If you play hard rock, you will need to master “power chords”, which are stripped down versions of traditional chords. There are two types of power chords – open and moveable. “Open Power Chords” are played at the first fret, and use open strings. “Moveable Power Chords” have no open strings and move around the neck, changing the letter name of the chord at each fret. Once you learn the basic forms, you will find yourself pretty much doing the same moves over and over for each song you play.

Again, if we practice badly, the same problems that will prevent progress as a “strummer & singer” will prevent progress here. Our fingers/hands/arms will be full of tension, and we will not be able to change chords smoothly.

The Bottom Line On Rock Rhythm Playing:

Time Required: 6 months to a year of 1-2 hours of practice a day.

Tools: first position power chords, movable power chords, common patterns, which are taken from bits of common chord forms around the neck

Recommended Resource: “The Principles Of Correct Practice For Guitar”

Troy Stetina’s  “Rock Rhythm Method”

David Hodge’s “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar”

The Rock Lead Player

The rock lead player must learn the five Pentatonic Scale positions, and know how to use them around the neck in all the common rock keys. They must also know the standard licks from each scale, and master the subtleties of getting a professional and musical sound.

Essential techniques of bending, vibrato, and string muting must be mastered, along with moderate to advanced pick technique. Since this is an improvised style of music, actually using the tools in an improvising setting must be practiced. It is not enough to simply master the tools themselves outside the context of making music with them.

NOTE: All of these tools are given in the “GuitarPrinicples Rock & Blues Foundation Course”, along with the practice methods you need in order to actually get them into your fingers. You can see the results students are getting with this course in our Video Gallery.

So, the student must play along with jam tracks, using the scales, licks, and techniques of the style. Learning other people’s solos is a great way to build taste and vocabulary, and paradoxically, to develop your own style, as you intuitively pick and choose the elements you are in artistic harmony with. Finally, playing with other people and joining/forming a band will take you where you want to go.

The Bottom Line On Rock Lead Playing:

Time Required: 2 years of 1 -2 hours a day

Tools: first the five Minor Pentatonic Scales plus the characteristic licks from each style, proper bending and vibrato technique, proper muting technique, competent alternate picking technique

Recommended Resource: The GuitarPrinciples Rock & Blues Foundation Course….this course gives you all the tools mentioned above in a level of detail not found anywhere else.

The Metal Guitarist

Being a metal guitarist is kind of like getting your masters degree, you need the fundamental training of a rock guitarist, and then you need a few more years of advanced training on top of that.

All of the above for the rock guitarist applies, and then the player must acquire a number of more specialized and sophisticated techniques including speed picking, sweep picking, and two hand tapping technique. Great players in this style employ a sophisticated exploitation of the fingerboards harmonic potential, requiring an extensive knowledge of scales and arpeggios (similar to the jazz player). Although you may be able to mimic other players rather quickly, in order to really know what you are doing will require an ongoing study of 5 to 10 years, and beyond.

The Bottom Line On Metal Guitar Playing:

Time Required: 3-5 years of 2-3 hours a day

Tools: extensive knowledge of scales and associated modes and arpeggios, advanced ability in special techniques associated with the style. Advanced picking technique.

Recommended Resource: The GuitarPrinciples Rock & Blues Foundation Course, followed by

Troy Stetina’s Metal Lead Vol 1 & 2,

Troy Stetina’s “Speed Mechanics”

Ney Mellos unique and powerful “Maximum Speed Picking”.

GuitarPrinciples “The 6 Six Essential Major Scales with Modes & Arpeggios”

The Learning Curve of Various Styles of Guitar (Part 3) Rock was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Enough chit-chat! Let’s get down to business.

Step One: Have a Goal

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for random walks in the woods and road trips without destinations. But if you’re trying to get from point A to point B, it helps to know where point B is. So set yourself some goals. Don’t be afraid to be overly general or overly specific. One goal may be “I want to learn to play blues guitar” and another goal may be “I want to be able to play Eric Clapton’s cover of “Cocaine” It’s good to have both types of goals. The big, long term goals help you keep your eye on the prize. They motivate you to keep practicing week after week, month after month, year after year. The small goals help to build your confidence when you accomplish them. They motivate you to keep practicing minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day.

Step Two: Know How Your Body Works

Have you ever stopped to think that they way you hold the guitar may be making it more difficult for you to make progress, or that simply changing the way you put your fingers down on the fretboard could speed up your playing? The body is such an intricate mess of bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments that they’ve got a whole field of study devoted to it, complete with its own ten-dollar-word: Kinesthetics.

Fortunately for you, a doctoral degree in kinestheology is not required to play guitar, but knowing what has to happen physically makes it easier to get the job done. You can do this by paying very close attention to your body when you play. I mean very close attention. Ever notice that when you move your hand up and down the neck of the guitar, it actually involves muscles in your wrist, fore-arm, upper arm, shoulder, and back? Experimenting with different ways of using these muscles can help you find the easiest way to play something. And wouldn’t it be nice if playing guitar were always easy.

Awareness of the body is very useful when we are trying to solve a problem or fix a mistake. Instead of just barreling through the mistake, stop to make sure you know what you are doing and whether or not what you are doing is what you should be doing. It may mean that you’re not playing guitar for a few minutes while you figure it out. That’s fine. A lot of guitar playing is done by muscle memory. That means that the more often you make a mistake, the more likely you are to make that same mistake. So it is far better to practice with clear intention than to slog away mindlessly at the strings.

Step Three: Know How Your Mind Works

Everyone looses his or her focus. And getting distracted is one of the largest barriers to making the fastest, most efficient progress. We all have busy and hectic lives, and it is difficult to keep paying attention to the guitar through an entire practice session. In fact, earlier this morning I was practicing with a clear goal (increasing my accuracy while playing awkward string crossings) and a clear knowledge of my physical body (just trust me, it would take a while to write out) and it started off well; I was making good progress. A few minutes later, I realized I had been thinking about the broken washing machine in my basement! I had gone into auto-pilot mode with my practice, and that is dangerous.

Two powerful tools that can help you in this regard are slow practice and paying attention to your breath. Try starting your practice session off by a few minutes of paying attention to your breathing (you can try counting to ten and then start over at one). The fun part here is to notice when you stop paying attention to your breath. This has the added benefit of relaxing your mind before you start to practice. When you get comfortable with this, you can try paying attention to your breath while playing (it is tricky!). I wouldn’t recommend counting your breath while playing because it may confuse your sense of rhythm.

Slow practice has a ton of benefits, but for now we’ll just say that it can be useful to see when your mind wanders while playing a song. In this type of slow practice, try paying attention to your playing (instead of your breathing) and noticing when your mind wanders. Because playing guitar is more complicated than breathing, you may want to narrow your focus to something smaller, such as one hand, or the tone of the guitar, or trying to find tense parts of your body and relaxing them. When you find your mind has gone out to pasture, make a mental note of what you were thinking about, and get back to the difficult work of paying attention.

As you get comfortable with this, you’ll find that some things are more important to pay attention to than others. This is a constantly changing scenario, varying with the type of problem you are trying to solve, the speed at which you are playing, and the way you may be feeling on any given day. Having a clear understanding of what you are trying to accomplish (the goals we spoke about earlier) and what you need to do to get it done (knowing your body) are fundamental to this kind of focus.

Step Four: Confidence

Question: Why is confidence essential to your becoming the best guitarist you can?

If your answer had anything to do with performance and stage fright, you missed the mark. Confidence is essential to your development because it yet another element of motivation. If you don’t have confidence in your ability to progress (or your methods to progress, or your teacher, etc) then you probably won’t practice. The more confidence you have, the more effort you will put towards achieving your goals.

So how do you develop confidence? Start with a little bit and build it. Don’t worry, everyone has some (obviously you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this article). Here’s what you do to build it:

Step One: Take that little bit of confidence that you already have. Maybe it is that you can put your finger down on the string and make a sound (even a bad one). Just something small is fine. After all, we’re developing it, aren’t we?

Alright, got your confidence? Ok, the next step is application. So go ahead, try to achieve your goal (whatever it is).

Congratulations! You did what you set out to do. Your confidence was justified. Feel it getting bigger? Good. Now you can go back to the beginning and start over with a greater sense of confidence. Maybe you even have enough confidence to try something a little more difficult (like getting the note to sound nice).

Before we get ahead of ourselves, did you notice how you were paying attention right there? Really paying attention to what you needed to get done? That’s an essential element of this whole process: Mindfulness. Nice, isn’t it.

Once you’ve got that mindfulness on tap, you’ll really start to be able to accomplish your goals. That’ll build your confidence. Once you’ve gotten used to the mindfulness, you’ll notice that your mind calms down when you’re being mindful. With a nice, calm mind, you can pay attention with out so much bloody effort. That’ll build your confidence. When that becomes the norm, it will become much easier to see what is useful to practice and what is not useful. You’ll become much more discerning about what you are doing and what you need to do to improve. You’ll know how to make any situation workable. And that will definitely build your confidence.

Step Five: Learn to Listen

Music is often thought of as a language, and languages are learned by listening and imitation. Once you learn to listen, you can hear for yourself how the language is spoken, and eventually decide how you want to speak the language (or, you could say: you can create goals for yourself based on the knowledge you have about how you want to sound. Goals again!).

So go turn on some music. And listen. Really listen. No, listen harder. You hear that? Hmmm…. this isn’t working. Let me explain a little bit better.

What I’m talking about when I say learning to listen is this: Instead of simply listening to the music or hearing the music, we are trying to understand what is happening in the music. If you’re new to this, you can start by making true/false statements. You might say, “The guitar solo is starting” and then say “Here is the chorus again” and then “Here is the climax of the song.” You might listen to your guitar instructor during a lesson and say, “When he plays those notes, the sound is continuous, there is no empty space between them.” Once you get comfortable doing that, start making qualitative (good/bad) statements like “This finger-picking guitar style makes this song very atmospheric” or “I like the way that the drums stop playing right before the guitar enters.” Just like with our guitar practice, the idea here is to be able to be both very general and as specific as possible with our statements. Being able to do so will give us a much larger musical-vocabulary.

It’s all fun and games when we are listening to other people and it can be super-helpful for our practice. But learning to listen to your own playing is just as essential as listening to others. And it can be a lot harder, because sometimes, we won’t like what we hear. Just relax, and realize that being a musician is a constant process of dissatisfaction with your current limitations and making the effort to move beyond them.

So, back to listening: Again, you can start with broad, objective statements, and slowly narrow them down to more specific, subjective ones. “I connected these notes here,” “I didn’t keep the rhythm” and then moving towards “I liked the way that I slowed down towards the end of the song” and “I didn’t play those notes the way I wanted to” are the types of observations that can make it more clear for you what you need to work on (I think those things are called goals. Just a hunch).

Step Six: Practice

Teaching students how to practice is the most essential and perhaps the most difficult task a teacher faces. After all, most of the student’s time improving their abilities is not done in the lesson, but in the practice room. Many people seem content to say “Practice makes perfect” without ever stopping to consider what practice actually is (or what “perfect” is, a tricky matter when dealing with music). Too often this leads to thoughtless practice, and if there’s one thing that’s true, it’s that thoughtless practice doesn’t lead to perfection.

So what is good practice? Well, practice can be broken down into different types. The first type is “Performance Practice.” This is when you sit down and play through an entire song, pretending that you are performing in front of an audience. Woodstock, Ozzfest, Carnegie Hall, take your pick. When you practice this way, all your mistakes are treated as they would be in a performance: No going back and trying again. Flubbed a note? Keep going. Missed a rhythm? Keep going – all the way to the end.

The second kind of practice is “Problem Solving Practice.” This is where you should spend most of your energy. Find the sections that are messing you up in Performance Practice and fix them. Here you want to take small sections of music and focus intensely on making it as good as possible.

Whatever you do, do not practice like this: Start from the beginning, go until you make a mistake, and then start over, promising yourself that you’ll get it right this time. Play through, make the same mistake, start at the beginning, go until you make the same mistake, start over, etc, etc etc. Why? Playing through two-thirds of a song only to get to the third you can’t do is going to make fixing that final third a very slow and painful process. Why not go right to the problem?

Another common mistake is to focus on what you can already do well. It’s true that playing things you are comfortable with is good for your confidence and comfort with the instrument. But in order to build your confidence and progress to new levels, you need to build your skills. So take the challenge of new, difficult material and run with it.

Step Seven: Get an Experienced Teacher

Yes, you might have seen this one coming. Of course I know you’re searching around the internet for guitar lessons, and there’s a good chance that you might be avoiding finding a teacher. But the truth is teachers know more then you do (at least the good ones do), even after you watch that YouTube video on finger tapping exercises. They are there because they can teach it to you faster than you could learn it yourself. They are there to provide the support and encouragement that will keep you motivated. They can point out your errors before you’ve noticed them, and sometimes before you even make them. They help you focus your efforts in the right direction, so that you reach your goals as quickly as possible.

And perhaps most importantly, a teacher can fill in the gaps. The gaps in the tab file you found, the gaps in the video-lesson you downloaded, and the gaps in the article you’re reading right now. If you already have a teacher, you can test me on this: Ask him/her questions about the things I’ve listed here, and see what they have to say about it. They’ll probably come at it from a different angle than I have here. And that individuality is what is great about the student-teacher relationship.

Kale Good is a guitar teacher based in the Philadelphia area. He holds a B.M. in Music Theory and a B.M. in Classical Guitar Performance from Temple University. For more information, including lesson schedules, check out his website at http://www.phillyguitarlessons.com/

The Seven Secrets to Six-String Success was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise