Guitar How-To» Guitar How-To

How To Play The Guitar Without Looking

gyorgy — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:35:31 +0000

There are many bad habits you can pick up when you learn to play the guitar. You can find yourself smacking your lips and grunting when you make a mistake, you can hold your breath while you attempt to play difficult passages, you can pull faces while you play, and you can be always looking at the neck.

Of course, when you are playing the guitar you need to look somewhere and the guitar neck is as good a place as anywhere but usually looking at the fretboard is just another expression of muscular tension. Also, if you are compelled to look at the neck you are not able to look into the audience or look at the people you are playing with.

So, to play the guitar without looking at the neck you must practice without looking. When you are at home practicing you need to find ways to free up your body when you are playing guitar so that you can CHOOSE where to look.

First, let’s make it clear that you do not need to look at the guitar neck. Your fingers, hands and arms have a memory that is much more accurate and fast than our thinking brain. If you practice your music slowly and precisely, your muscle memory will take over and your body will play the guitar without your eyes needing to look or your brain needing to think about where to aim your fingers.

If you play the guitar from music or tab, looking at the guitar neck will not be a problem. If you need to stop and look at the guitar while you practice a new chord or a difficult chord change, then stop playing and practice the difficult bit. Once you can play through the bit that’s slowing you down, continue playing from whatever is on the paper in front of you.

Many guitar players practice in front of the television to break the spell of the guitar neck. Others play in the dark. Playing in the dark will take some time and effort but once you gain the confidence in your muscle memory it won’t be too hard.

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How To Play Guitar Fast

gyorgy — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:37:40 +0000

The possibility of learning how to play fast has always been one of the things that attracts people to the guitar. Playing guitar fast shows that you have mastery over your chosen instrument and over the music you play. Knowing when and how to apply this mastery is something you can spend the rest of your life learning.

The foundation of playing fast is long hours of playing slowly and deliberately. You need to always know where your fingers are going next. We learn little routines in our lives through constant repetition: showering, preparing food, riding a bike. If we learn how to move correctly when we practice the guitar, we will play correctly in front of our audience.

So if you want to play fast, on no account practice fast. Never. You will notice as you practice that speed builds up over time. If you try to rush when you are practicing, you are undermining the results of any correct practice you do.

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How To Make Your Guitar Practice Time Effective

gyorgy — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:54:07 +0000

In many fields of endeavor you will find experts recommending that identifying a small technical problem and finding how to work on it is the best way to make progress. When you learn new guitar songs you will find that you can make one or two bars a special project that you can work on, whether it be a chord change, scale passage or whatever. If you are having particular problems changing between the C and the F chord, try slowing down the change to feel where the problem is in your hands and arms.

It doesn’t have to be a continuous fifteen minutes or half hour of going from one fingering to the next. You can make it interesting by making the change faster or slower, using the metronome and playing without any rhythm, but all the time learning how your muscles are rebelling against what your brain is trying to make them do.

This video is on chord changing but the general laid back approach to working with the guitar will help you in all aspects of your relationship with the guitar.

Playing Notes On The Guitar

gyorgy — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:14:31 +0000

To become familiar with the guitar you will need to start simply. First you need to find someone who can show you the correct way to hold your guitar. It is absolutely essential that you get this right because if you don’t learn how to hold your instrument, you risk damage to your back or hands.

To get the feel of playing the guitar, play the open strings one at a time. Hold the pick firmly but without unnecessary tension as you pick the strings. Keep this in mind as you start playing fretted notes. The guitar strings are fretted by the tip of the finger. By the tip I mean the top of the finger if you are pointing upward. The finger presses slightly behind the frets, so if a guitarist says he is playing “at the first fret”, he means his finger is just BEHIND the first fret.

Repeat going through the open strings and the first fret position a few times. It’s not necessary to do this kind of exercise for hours – just for a few minutes each day during the first week or two of learning the guitar.

This video will help you with the next step – playing chords . . .

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How To Solo With The Minor Pentatonic Scale

gyorgy — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:36:18 +0000

The two pentatonic scales we use in guitar solos are the major pentatonic and the minor pentatonic scale. The major pentatonic scale has five notes – the root note, the second note, the third, fifth and sixth. The minor pentatonic scale contains the root, flattened third, fourth, fifth and flattened seventh. In the key of C the major pentatonic scale is C D E G A and the minor pentatonic scale is C Eb F G Bb

The minor pentatonic scale is commonly used to solo over guitar chords. Mastering the knack of soloing with the minor pentatonic scale will add unimagined excitement to your hitherto dreary guitar solos. So how do we best exploit this handy guitar player’s tool? We are going to learn to how to play solos over major, minor and dominant chords.

Let’s take a common chord progression using the root, fourth and fifth notes of the scale. If we are playing a song in the key of C major, the I, IV and V chords are C, F and G major.

For every major chord there is a relative minor chord. You can best find the relative minor of a major chord on your guitar by finding the note that is three frets below the major chord’s root note.

Here’s a video guitar lesson on the minor pentatonic scale . . .

Let’s say we have a C major chord, the root note will be C. If you take the C note on the fifth string of the guitar which is at the third fret, three notes below that gives us the open fifth string which is the note A. So if you ask what the relative minor of C major is, the answer is A minor. So if you want to play a solo over a C major chord, you would use the A minor pentatonic scale. To play a guitar solo over an F chord, you would use the D minor pentatonic, and over the G major chord, the scale to use would be the E minor pentatonic.

It is a little simpler to explain how to solo over minor chords. You just play the E minor pentatonic over an E minor chord, a D minor pentatonic scale over a D minor chord, and so on.

For playing over dominant seventh chords you would play the relative minor pentatonic scale or you could use the minor pentatonic one tone below the root of the dominant seventh chord.

To simplify things you could just use the A minor pentatonic for all the chords in the key of C. As with all musical theory, converting these ideas into practice is easier than explaining them.

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What Is In A Guitar Instruction Manual?

gyorgy — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:02:16 +0000

There are two kinds of guitar instruction manual. One is a book that comes with a guitar that shows you how to change the strings, care for the instrument, lower the action and other technical stuff. The other kind is a cry for help from a newbie guitar player. For a beginner guitarist an instruction manual would be a dream come true. One book that will answer all the questions anybody ever thought to ask about the guitar. You think of a question or you find something you do not understand, your guitar instruction manual will have the solution right there for you.

Maybe it would be some help to think about what a comprehensive guitar instruction manual might contain. So let us clear away the cobwebs of confusion and sort out the odd socks of despair. A guitar player only needs the knowledge about his own style of playing. To read about the history of jazz guitar might be interesting to a heavy metal player but it might not help him much with his chosen field of music.

A guitar instruction manual will help you to get to know the basic types of guitar. For instance, the nylon string acoustic which is used by folksingers, classical guitarists and flamenco players. You can safely use your nails or the flesh of the finger tips on this guitar. The steel string acoustic, however is played by folk artists and rock performers. To pluck the steel strings on an acoustic guitar you will probably need to use fingerpicks and a thumbpick or a plectrum. If you want to play jazz you will be most likely playing an archtop electric guitar. The solid body electric guitar is most associated with rock and roll and its many sub-genres.

A guitar instruction manual would help you to start playing as quickly as possible so it would probably begin with instructions on how to hold the guitar. If you want to be a plectrum player the manual would tell you the best position for your right hand to perform up and down strokes, and if you want to play fingerstyle it would show you the angle you need to get a good sound from plucking the strings. Left hand technique also needs to be clarified. The left hand must be able to move freely while forming chord shapes that use all four fingers. In some styles even the thumb is used to fret notes.

There are techniques the left hand uses to make music. They have names like hammer-ons and pull-offs, slurs and barre chords. The right hand needs to know about Travis picking, string skipping, flat picking, tremolo playing and strumming patterns.

Your guitar instruction manual will contain a straightforward guide to learning to read music or guitar tab. The basic theory stuff should be there like what the dots in music notation mean, what the names of the notes are, where sharps and flats happen and a picture of the guitar fretboard to show you where the notes appear.

You have heard of chords and scales but a guitar instruction manual will tell you what they are and why they matter to you as a musician. What is more, it will show you how to start playing simple chords and scales. A good instruction manual always starts off with simple things to get your technique started, then shows you why you need to move onto more challenging chords and scales.

The best guitar instruction manual ever written is the internet. It has the answer to every question right there at you fingertips. All you need is the ability to ask the questions you need to make progress as a guitarist.

I could not resist posting this Jamplayvideo of a lesson on how to play Smoke On The Water . . .

Guitar Playing Tips For Newbies

gyorgy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:47:04 +0000

All new guitar players look for useful tips to help them through the early stages of learning to play. Guitar playing whether it is playing solos or strumming chords is a journey into unknown territory for most people so I will list a few tips on guitar playing for beginners. The first tip I can offer is to follow any advice you are given. Putting plans into action and following through on guidance from mentors seems to be the very hardest thing for people to do. There is an invisible barrier between hearing or reading valuable information and putting it into practice without somehow changing it. So the first one of my guitar playing tips is: try to painstakingly follow any tips or help that you get from other guitar players.

When you begin to practice the guitar you are learning several new skills. First of all your hands, fingers, arms, shoulders and back are going to be learning by repetition many new movements, both large and small. If you decide to learn to read sheet music and music theory, there is a whole set of new information and terminology that you will have to get used to. All new skills, whether new muscle movements or new patterns of thinking, are taken on board very slowly at first, and there is one thing that will help your mind and body assimilate all this new stuff. Daily practice. Every day.

Practice does not mean that you learn a chord change or scale and then you go somewhere and repeat it until you know it. Practice is a process of trying to understand what you are doing and why. If you are given three simple chords by your guitar teacher and you are asked to practice changing from one chord shape to another, you might find yourself taking each chord change as one movement instead of a series of small muscular changes that you can discover for yourself and repeat slowly and calmly until suddenly your body strings these movements together into a seemingly effortless transition from one chord shape to the next. So your daily practice should be taken care of in a questioning frame of mind. Every day playing song or a scale exercise that you have played many times before can give you some new understanding of the guitar.

The first thing you discover when you start guitar practice is the discomfort. Physical discomfort is when your body is doing things that it is not used to. The way to get your body used to new things is to do those things over and over. Sitting on a stool with a guitar in your arms will be quite uncomfortable at first but after a while you will not even notice you are doing it. Also at the beginning of your life as a guitar player you will find that the guitar strings make painful dents in the tips of your fingers. This is why guitar teachers usually advise students to start playing on a nylon string acoustic guitar until the tips of your fingers are toughened up.

You will find a ton of guitar tips on YouTube – this video is one of the many good ones:

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Teaching Children How To Play Guitar

gyorgy — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:08:59 +0000

Teaching children how to play guitar is a scary prospect for anybody who is not an experienced teacher. If you have volunteered for this job to help out a friend or family member, there is no need to panic. There is just one key thing to remember: in order to teach children how to play the guitar you must first get their attention. If you are a parent you might already have some ideas on how to do that but if not, here are some suggestions.

It is always a good idea to give a child some useful stuff like the chords to a song they have heard. This puts them at their ease and helps with giving them some music theory. Remember when passing along some theoretical knowledge, include why you are doing it. You can give child some idea of the big picture by letting him know that this knowledge will help him work out the chord to songs for himself. Also during your guitar teaching sessions you can have some discussion about what music they like or wether they are going to learn enough to be able to play in a band. Getting to know your pupil and letting them get to know you will help soften the blow when you need to give them exercises or scales that they think are boring.

You could bear in mind for yourself, and let your guitar student know that your job is not to teach him how to play but to give him the theoretical and practical knowledge he needs to learn how to play the guitar himself. The bottom line is the only person who can put in the work and practice is the child himself.

Avoid telling a child you will teach him how to play a particular song if you know that it is too advanced for him. A song with just two chords is a good start when you are teaching children how to play. Find something that is both simple to learn and enjoyable. The Dixie Cups song Iko,Iko is good. No child wants to learn boring stuff so you will need to go back and explain more than once how and why the child has to place his fingers on the guitar neck and why it is better to hold the pick in a certain way. A basic Latin or rock and roll song will give young guitar students the chance to learn three chords. La Bamba or Twist And Shout will do. You can switch between them and use them as a basis for learning more songs.

If you do not like the idea of teaching children how to read music them do not worry about it. Give yourself some time to take a look at the bare minimum of music note reading and theory necessary to help them relate to the guitar. There are just twelve notes they need to learn the names of. You can give a kid a diagram of the guitar fretboard showing where the notes are but you do not have to make him memorize it.

The material you teach children who want to learn how to play the guitar must help them develop dexterity in their fingers. This is a process that takes place all by itself and kids are able to absorb motor skills much easier than adults. Just gently keep them on track – do not let them develop bad habits.

How To Play Guitar – Plan And Practice

gyorgy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:17:51 +0000

It seems that alot of people think that practice is the main thing in learning how to play guitar is practice. It makes sense but with a little experience you might find that practice is only one of many parts of the guitar playing jigsaw. Other things you need to be a guitar player are the ability to plan ahead and the patience and persistence to put your plan into action. Too much philosophizing is not a good thing in a practical field like guitar playing but being able to plan and execute are important if you want to make real progress.

But if you are too patient maybe you never get anything done, and if you are too persistent you might possibly become a little rigid in your approach to your guitar practice. So a happy medium needs to be found between treating guitar practice as a discipline that must be followed relentlessly every day for exactly one hour and the opposite attitude that sees you only practicing when you get the urge.

To balance your natural qualities you need a plan. Your plan is a witness to your actions. It does not nag you, it just watches you and it knows when you have not done any guitar practice. Your plan will help you to modify your little character flaws by standing with you holding ready to give you a reality check. If you want to learn songs, you need to learn and practice some guitar chords. You also need to do some research into your repertoire. Listen to as much music as you can handle.

Your plan needs to be written down and kept somewhere safe but not so safe that you will never find it. If you occasionally forget to practice or work on getting a repertoire, you can always look at your plan.

Here is a video example of a guy with a guitar practice plan . . .

So you just jot down whatever you think is necessary to keep your guitar playing moving along down. Step one could be keeping your guitar in tune, so a tuner is called for. You can download them for free or some guitar sites have them online where you can get to them by bookmarking them. Another thing you need is sheet music and tabs for songs. Knowing where these guitar playing tools are is important and making the effort to download or bookmark them will help you get your guitar practice routine moving along. Setting an aim for each day or each week is also crucial. Maybe you want to learn a song or a chord progression this week so write your aim down.

Every week you write down a plan. Every week you check your progress. If you are not good at keeping to your plan, that is okay. Nobody is perfect. But if you keep planning, you will make progress.

Here is another video featuring a guitar chord practice routine . . .

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