Guitar How-To

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This is a little article to help you to keep track of what you should be doing between guitar lessons. If you are new to the guitar and do not have your own direction yet, it can be difficult to know how to spend your practice time profitably. If you have a guitar teacher, he will be showing you how to play and giving you material to practice, but when you are new it is possible to lose sight of HOW to practice.

For a start, even though the world of guitar playing is full of guitarists who love to strike poses, it is not an integral part of guitar playing. You can play guitar very well without looking dramatic. If you find yourself playing in front of a mirror, and you are not doing it to check for excessive tension in your muscles, then stop doing it. Move away from the mirror and go back to listening.

What you should be aiming for when you practice is precision. Your guitar teacher or an audience will expect you to be able to play scales evenly without fluffing notes, make chord changes cleanly and play chords without muffling the strings. These are things that no beginner guitar player can do, so you must be working on them all the time.

At the same time as working on the clarity of your guitar playing you should be practicing with a metronome. Your work with the metronome will set you apart from other beginner guitar players who think they can keep time okay by themselves. Believe me, the two kinds of guitar player sound very different.

Here is a video on working with a metronome . . .

Here is the first of a four-part series of articles from guitarmessenger.com on using a metronome.

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