Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Accelerate Your Guitar Playing

First, define your objectives and determine your approach. These objectives may change as you progress, but a goal is important before starting to play the guitar.

Begin by forming good study habits. Part of your study will be physical performance and part will be mentally engaged in the study of theory, listening to recordings, tapes and the radio, watching television, Internet and watching live performances. You will be talking to other guitarists, students and professionals, studying in classes and with private teachers and of course via online guitar courses, guitar training software etc. You will also be improvising. All of these activities will give you valuable information and experience, increase your skill, broaden your scope and develop your insights. Keep an open mind and learn something from everyone you meet ...even if it is not what to do!

The following suggestions should help you in your study and practice:
Never practice or study when you are tired or worried. Relax a bit before you begin. If possible study in a quiet place where you can be undisturbed. Have a music stand adjusted to your eye level when you practice, and make sure that you always have good light. Form the habit of studying in a regular place and at a regular time.

Several short study practice periods on successive days are usually better than one lengthy period of study. A little study every day is better than spasmodic, inconsistent study. Use various ways of making yourself think about what you are studying. If you are looking at a printed page of notes, try to imagine them on a guitar finger board and vice versa.

Form the habit of mentally reviewing every page of music you study before going on to the next one. See how much of it you can recall and try to remember it. When you have learned something make use of it as soon as you can. The sooner and more often, the better. If you have learned fingerings for a few new chords so that you can play them even slowly, make up an exercise or song that involves these chords and has you shifting from one chord to another often. It is not enough to learn about something. Unless you utilize this information it does not become a part of you.

When you have completed a reasonable amount of material, take time to summarize what you have covered. You may want to write your summary. Keep a good music dictionary handy, and use it frequently. When you have discovered the meaning of a new word or term, use it yourself.

Self Study

To correct poor study conditions, consider thoughtfully each of the questions below and write specific answers to each one. Then decide what you can do to correct each of the things wrong with your study conditions. Make notes of these and correct them.

1. What can you see on your desk, music stand, or through your window that distracts you?

2. What music, talking or other noises are disturbing your practice and study?

3. What is wrong with your position or posture when you practice or study?

4. Are you sure your lighting is adequate? What is wrong with it?

5. Is your work space large enough and arranged well?

6. What materials do you lack for effect study?

7. What time of day is most difficult to practice or study? Why?

8. What worries or special interests divert you from studying?

Effective methods of practicing or studying, of themselves, will not suffice. Careful planning also is essential. Lay out your work systematically before you begin. Each individual's time, facilities and desires are personal matters. Just be sure to adopt some plan and stick to it as conscientiously as possible.

Mike Hayes is a guitar teacher, author, performing musician and session guitarist with over 30 years of professional experience. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular free ecourse, available at: => http://www.guitarcoaching.com/


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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Learning To Play The Acoustic Guitar Using Tablature

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The acoustic guitar evolved from classic guitars. The strings of an acoustic guitar are typically made from steel rings, as opposed to the nylon or catgut strings used for classical guitars. That is why an acoustic guitar is sometime called a steel-stringed guitar. Acoustic guitars have a clearer and louder sound due to a much stronger construction than other guitars.

A acoustic guitar is usually played using a guitar pick, also called a plectrum (plural plectra), made from plastic, metal, ivory or other materials. The guitarist strums or strikes the guitar strings with the pick, which he will often hold between the index finger and thumb. Other guitarists do not use a pick, but play with their fingernails or bare fingers strumming or plucking individual notes on the guitar.

The type of construction and the materials used influence the price and sound quality of an acoustic guitar. A guitar with solid sides, back and top will be more expensive than one with laminated sides and back. The solid type guitars are generally made using maple, mahogany or Indian rosewood, whereas cheaper guitars are build with laminated woods. The neck and fingerboard are made with denser woods like cedar and ebony. The tone of the guitar is defined by the combination of woods used in the manufacture. To make the guitars a little less expensive, some manufacturers use alternative materials such as graphite and plastic.

A guitar tablature is a diagram of the strings with finger positions indicated by numerals corresponding to the appropriate frets. Tablature is sometime referred to in the short form "tab". Learning to play the acoustic guitar can be greatly eased by using tablature it corresponds more to how you actually play the guitar than standard musical notation.

Vertical lines on the tab represent the strings, horizontal lines represent the frets and the dots show the finger positions. For an acoustic guitar it is a six line staff with the lines numbered. Take note that the tablature is written "upside down" with the higher notes at the top and lower ones at the bottom to correspond to standard music notation. The numbers indicate which fret should be used.

Guitar tabs are standardized, but various publishers of sheet music may use different styles writing guitar music. Guitar magazines, songbooks and journals will provide a legend to specify the style they are using.

The six line guitar tab has several advantages over standard musical notifaction that use a five line staff for learning to play acoustic guitar. It is much easier to interpret guitar tab and new players can pick it up quickly. So go ahead, get some of your favourite songs in tab format and play away!

Get more Learn guitar music tips and resources at http://www.guitarmusicinfo.com/, including How To Start To Learn Lead Guitar

Sunday, February 11, 2007

How to Take Advantage of Free Guitar Lessons Online

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Do you want free guitar lessons? You've come to the right place. I'll give you a quick guide to all the free guitar lessons you can get.

The internet has given great opportunities that never existed before. You can now find information on virtually anything you need. The publishers who give away such useful information free do so because they've found another way of monetizing their efforts. It's just like TV. You get free programming while they sell advert placements.

Net result: You win; they win too.

So what has that got to do with my free guitar lessons you ask? That's where I was heading. Just give me a minute and it will become so clear to you.

At least you know about Google. People do a lot to rank high for search terms. That guarantees them a lot of visitors whom they can convert to cash. They achieve this with high value content. So, in the music niche and guitar niche in particular, they know that giving away useful guitar playing tips and lessons will make you, a guitar enthusiast, come to their site.

So here's what you'll do...

Go to Google or any other search engine and type in any of these following keywords...

"Free guitar tutor"

"Free guitar software"

"guitar playing tips"

"guitar playing guide"

"guitar online lesson"

These should get you loaded with free guitar lessons. But, what do you do when you have questions about your playing? A number of things:

You can go to gig around you and ask the guys there how. Musicians are very liberal people. They will be glad to show you how to go about your guitar lessons. If you don't have a good guitarist around you, here's an online option...

Search for "guitar player's forum." This will give you a number of guitar help-and-be-helped communities online. If you do these you'll get the most out of your free guitar lessons.

Bill McRea is the publisher of Guitar Warehouse the best place to Buy Guitar and learn Guitar Playing Techniques. Visit our site for over 60 Free Guitar Lessons and Information about playing Guitar.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

How To Play Fast Guitar-7 Tips To Improve Your Skill In 7 Days

1-Practice-It’s obvious but many people claim they want to learn how to play fast guitar but don’t put the time in. You get out what you put in! Even if you don’t have much time to spare, half an hour a day is enough to help you improve.

2-Focus your practice-You can increase the benefits of your guitar practice exponentially by practicing the same stuff each time. A good way to start this is to choose 4 licks or scales or parts of scales (anything except chords will work just fine), and play through each lick in a loop for 15 minutes. By the end of the FIRST WEEK you’ll be two or three times as fast as you were with those licks to begin with.

3-Think long term. Focused practice everyday is great, but it’s even better to have a goal in mind. for example if you want to learn a particular piece, gear your practice toward licks and techniques used in the piece and then dedicate the last 15-20 minutes(depending on how much time you have) to practicing the actual piece. Nothing helps you learn how to play fast guitar and stay motivated more than being able to see your daily progress.

4-Work on legato-Legato actually means smooth, or flowing, but in guitar circles it is the term given to fretting notes with your left hand and making them sound without actually picking anything with your right hand. It could also be called the art of hammering on and pulling off. Excellent practice as it will strengthen your left hand, not only making you faster and smooth, but will improve your vibrato and chord changes too. It just makes your hand fitter! A great way to practice this is to run up and down some scales, but only pick the first note on each string, so you will be hammering on going up and pulling off on the way down. It’s tough at first but persevere and you will get rewards!

5-Use a metronome. Other musicians seem to use metronomes with no trouble, but guitarists are allergic to them, or at least seem to be! I’ll spell it out - An hour with a metronome does A LOT more good than an hour without. It’s simply the best tool for highlighting the weak areas and inefficiencies in your technique. There is a learning curve but stick with it-your playing will change for the better, permanently! Buy one!

6-Use a hard pick. Controversial? I know that people should use whatever pick they want to, but a softer pick WILL slow you down, and a harder one won’t. It’s simple physics. Most picks have a degree of flexibility, so after picking a note we have to wait for it to return to its proper shape before we pick again, or the note is not picked cleanly. Put it this way-trying to learn how to play fast guitar while using soft picks is like putting bicycle wheels on a Ferrari and then trying to drive fast. Not going to happen!

7- Start slow-Work on something until you can play it with no mistakes at all before you crank up the speed. This will do more for your all round musical skills than just pushing the metronome up a few beats every few minutes. If you move forward before your skills are ready your playing will be very very sloppy, and that will be a real hard habit to get out of!

Hopefully those tips will help you break out of a rut and get your fretboard burning!

Steve Higgins is an accomplished guitarist who enjoys seeing others improve their skill. To check out more tips visit his blog.

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