If your goal is to become a competent guitarist then the most effective course of action is to find yourself a good guitar tutor. While it’s possible to teach yourself using online resource, tutorials books and DVDs, there is no substitute for one to one time with a patient, competent guitar teacher. So what can you do to find and choose a good guitar teacher?
The first things to consider are your personal goals. Perhaps your aim is to become a great lead guitarist in an indie rock band? Or maybe you just want to learn a few tunes to play to your family? And what about timescale, do you want to be gigging in a rock band within six months or are you happy to take your time and learn at a more leisurely pace?
I recommend that you write down a list of your specific goals, identify a few tunes that you would like to play, guitar solos that you would love to play. All of this valuable information will help you choose the right guitar teacher who can help you attain your goals.
Having details your aims and aspirations its now time to identify some tutor candidates. Group tuition is an option that I recommend you consider. This can often be much less expensive than one to one guitar lessons and you’ll get to meet others who are at a similar stage of learning to yourself.
But if you really want some quality individual tuition you’ll now need to find some prospective tutors in your area. Take a look at your local business telephone directory along with your local newspapers and you might like to pop along to your nearest musical instrument store to see if they have any recommended tutors. Create a list of local tutors along with their contact details.
The next thing I recommend is writing yourself a list of questions to ask these tutors. Here are a few ideas:
1) Can you tell me how long you’ve been teaching guitar and what your teaching background is
2) How much are your lessons and where are they carried out? (Some tutors will be happy to come to your home).
What are your favored guitar playing styles to teach? (Do they use acoustic guitar or electric guitar?)
4) What is the format of your lessons and do you provide any materials?
Its a good idea to get into a conversation and ask as many questions as you need to. You might also like to ask for testimonials from some current and some previous students.
Once you have boiled down your list of tutor candidates you should contact your favorite and ask if they will offer a trial lesson at a reduced rate. Many tutors will be more than happy to offer a reduced price introductory lesson.
Its wrong to assume that someone will make a good guitar teacher just because they play well. While its important that your guitar teacher can play well they also need to know how to teach.
If, after your first lesson, you are not over-flowing with enthusiasm and keenness to keep playing then I suggest that you look for another tutor. Its crucial that your guitar lessons inspire you to play at every possible opportunity.
I hope that these simple suggestions will help you to identify and team up with a great guitar tutor who will work with you to help you attain your guitar playing goals.
Do you ever get the feeling that you’re not progressing at your fastest possible rate? Do you ever feel overwhelmed? How about the feeling that you’re not really 100% sure if you’re improving or not? If you do…you’re definitely not alone!
Learning guitar can be a bit overwhelming at times. There are literally enough things to learn to keep anyone busy for MANY lifetimes. This can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because you’ll never run out new and exciting things to learn. It can also seem like a curse because you’ll never get to the bottom of your “to do” list! So how do you keep motivated and constantly have the feeling of progress? That’s where speed goals come in…
I’ve been using speed goals for about the last 15 years. They are one of the most powerful weapons in my guitar practice arsenal. Let’s take a look now at what they are, and what benefits you’ll gain by setting speed goals.
***What Are Speed Goals?****
A speed goal is a goal that you set to reach a particular metronome setting. For example, you might say that your speed goal for a particular sweep picking exercise is sixteenth notes at 160bpm (beats-per-minute). You would practice that exercise daily until the target speed has been reached.
An effective speed goal has these qualities…
1. No Deadline. Unlike traditional goal setting, there are no deadlines with speed goals. This is because you must allow your technique to develop in a relaxed and natural way. If you set a deadline, you may be tempted to increase your metronome speeds at too fast a rate in order to meet the deadline. Result? You’ll basically program tension into your muscles and most likely get frustrated.
2. Challenging. Your speed goal must be challenging. It should be fast enough to make you grow as a player. For example, if you can currently play an exercise at 120bpm then something like 144bpm would make a good goal. Once you reach 144bpm, then you might set another speed goal of around 160bpm. See how this works?
3. Realistic. Don’t set your speed goal too high. If you can currently only play an exercise at 120bpm, then 240bpm would probably be too high. I generally set speed goals that I think I can achieve within a month or two.
***Benefits of Speed Goals***
A few benefits of setting speed goals include…
1. They give you something to work towards. This helps you to stay motivated and enthusiastic about your guitar practice.
2. They give you a feeling of progress. You’ll feel great each time you reach a speed goal. These small wins help you feel like you are progressing steadily towards the larger goals that you have set for your guitar playing.
3. They tell you when you can STOP practicing an exercise. Once you’ve achieved your goal you can then move onto something else. The speed goal stops you from mindlessly practicing an exercise that you have already mastered.
4. They give you measurable results. If your speeds are increasing then you have quantitative proof that you are improving. You KNOW for sure that you are getting better. This helps you become more confident about your guitar playing.
I encourage you to set a few speed goals now. If you set them consistently, I think you’ll be amazed at how fast you’ll progress.
If you interested in improving scales and other technical details of guitar playing then visit this site: guitar scale mastery. guitar scale mastery helps improve your technique, speed, improvising and musicality. Read our guitar scale mastery review and make the smart choice!
Guitar Lessons can be fun and easy. The most important thing is the approach and additude that you have and use when you begin. If you are just starting, you can master the the art of playing the guitar.
So you have finally decided to learn guitar. You have come to the right place. I will be offering advice and give reviews on good places were you can get guitar lessons. Learning guitar can be fun and easy. You can even learn how to play guitar right in the comfort of your own home. There are so many different programs that help you learn guitar. One site you can check out for now.
Some people learn how to play guitar on their own, however the majority of people are not able to learn guitar on their own without any help. At the top of this site I have posted a link that will take you step by step in learning the guitar. I have found many of my students say the guitar lessons really excelled them in their ability to learn guitar.
In the beginning it is good to have patience. Start out learning a few cords and then practice them. Weather you want to play country or rock knowing simple cords is the key to getting started.
Once you have mastered a few cords keep learning more and more. Then you can begin to use variations of these cords to play songs you know or write new ones. This is some of the steps in learning how to play guitar.
I have had my students try different course programs that help them to learn guitar. One good thing about the courses you can take from home is that you decide when you want to take you guitar lessons. You can also decide how many times you want to repeat a guitar lessons.
This gives you flexibility and now time is on your side and learning guitar fits into any schedule. Most of my new students learn guitar basics and are already playing songs by the end of a weekend. Learning guitar is always easer than the person thinks. People of all ages can achieve many different levels when they decide to learn how to play guitar.
You can learn electric and acoustic guitar with this course. I am will reviewing another course for those people who really want to get the most out of their guitar lessons. For now I have found at least one very good course.
So remember you can learn guitar and knowing how to play guitar is easy. Just work on those guitar lessons a few times a week to improve on your skills.
Please feel free to come back and check for new reviews and tips. I will be adding new posts as I discover new ways to learn guitar.
Please visit some of my sites Learn Guitar and Guitar Lessons
If you interested in improving scales and other technical details of guitar playing then visit this site: guitar scale mastery. guitar scale mastery helps improve your technique, speed, improvising and musicality. Read our guitar scale mastery review and make the smart choice!
If desire is the most important part of learning guitar(without it you wouldn’t have even started), then concentration is the most important part of practicing guitar.
I often say to people that 20 minutes of focused practice can beat, hands down, 2 hours of ‘normal’ practice, or just goofing about.
Many people are discouraged when they are told how much time they must put into practice. The truth is, you don’t have to practice all the time to be a good guitarist.
(I’m not saying you shouldn’t have time to goof off and play around. But if you want to improve quickly, you must keep playing guitar and practicing guitar separate.)
Let me tell you now…
It isn’t how much time you put into practice, it’s the quality of the practice that matters.
When I play guitar, I play to have fun, I play to perform for people, and I play for the fun of playing! That’s why I started learning guitar in the first place.
But when I practice guitar, I focus and concentrate on what I’m trying to achieve, and I work on the goals that I want to complete.
You see, if you completely focus on one thing you are more likely to do it well.
This may sound simple too to some. Some of you may be thinking “this is great, I only need to practice 20 minutes a day and ill improve more than I would if I practicing 2 hours a day”.
Well that’s not exactly true.
Its how focused your practice is that counts, not how long you practice. Can you really focus for 2 hours?
Let me give you this small example to illustrate my point.
Picture a red triangle inside a black box.
Close your eyes, and keep that image in your mind for 5 seconds without letting a single thing distract you – no other thought must enter your mind for that 5 seconds…
How well did you do? Be honest with yourself.
This isn’t an easy thing to do. Most people find this difficult at first. Its difficult to keep a focused mind like this.
I hope this example has shown you that it’s not that easy to keep focused attention & concentration for look periods of time.
But still, you must always remember that its quality and not quantity of practice that makes the difference between a great player and an average player.
This is a perfect time to tell you that you shouldn’t be spending hours and hours ‘practicing’, because you simply can’t focus for that amount of time.
If you are practicing for a solid 2 hours or more you are probably not helping your development as a guitarist that much.
A much better way of using this time is to practice in bursts.
A good idea would be to practice in bursts of 20 minutes or so. You can vary it depending on what you feel like doing, but try not to practice for long periods of time in one go. It’s not helping as much as you think it might be.
Also, it’s important to take breaks from what you’re practicing. You can do something else for awhile, go for a walk, watch TV, or maybe just play around and have fun with your guitar and loosen up a bit before you start focusing on practice again.
It is important for you to have a definition in your own mind of ‘practicing guitar’ and ‘playing guitar’.
This will keep you more focused and allow you to reach your goals as a guitarist much easier.
An exercise for you to try to help you further develop concentration is to sit silently and count slowly from one to ten in your mind.
If anything should interrupt your counting, whether it is a noise, a stray thought, or the awareness of your own breathing, you must start over from one.
Again, it’s unlikely you will be able to achieve this straight-away. It’s a hard thing to do. However how out and ‘Zen’ this exercise may seem, it will re-focus your mind on the task in hand, and it’ll help you learn faster if you can stay focused on what you’re practicing.
You should try this exercise whenever you start to feel like you’re loosing your focus.
To learn how to play guitar, visit this site: jamorama acoustic. jamorama acoustic is a complete set of lessons for playing the guitar. Read our jamorama acoustic review and make the smart choice!
In this helpful article, you will get guitar playing tips designed to help you improve your playing skills. So let’s get started…
1) The first guitar playing tip is to use good posture while playing the guitar
You should sit up straight in an armless chair. If the chair has arms, you will not be able to hold the guitar properly for playing. Sit up straight to protect your back.
If you get a backache after a bit of playing, you will realize how having good posture while playing the guitar is so important.
2) The next guitar playing tip is to hold the pick firmly but not too firmly.
If you do not grip the pick firmly enough, you may lose it during a vigorous bout of strumming! But if you grip it too tightly, you may find your whole arm getting tired. Middle of the road is the best guitar playing tip I can give you where pick grip is concerned.
3) Choosing the right pick is another guitar tip that is important.
Picks come in finger and flat styles. Most guitarists use a flat one. They also come in three different levels of flexibility.
Several professional guitarists have given me the advice of getting the softest, flabbiest pick I can find for learning to keep up with fast strumming. It’s easier on the arm. Flabby picks are harder to use, however, if you are trying to pick out individual strings, as in adding a bass line, or flat-picking.
After some practice with a soft pick, you will probably want to move on to a firmer one. A final guitar playing tip about picks is that the firmest picks make the richest sounds.
4) Here is a guitar playing tip – learn to play arpeggios.
It’s fun, great for old folk songs, and sounds beautiful! You won’t be able to use a pick, though. Finger the chord. Now, pick the bass note of the chord with your thumb. You can use a thumb pick for this, however, it works just fine to use your thumb. You will grow a little callus there which will make it easier.
Now use your index finger to pluck the third string. Next, pluck the second string with your middle finger. And then pluck the top string with your ring finger. You’ve picked four notes.
If you repeat the sequence, giving each note the timing of an eighth note, you will fill a measure of a song written in four/four time. This guitar playing tip will make people sit up and take notice, but it does require practice, and calluses, to play this way. Try playing the strings in different order, and alternate bass strings.
5) A final guitar playing tip involves the chord D.
While playing the D chord, try adding your pinkie finger to the chord at the third fret. This new chord is often called “D-suspended” or “D-sus.” Then play D again. Now try lifting your middle finger so that the top string of the chord is open. And back to D again.
You can do the same thing with the A-chord, but have to do the change on the second string. Up one fret to the third makes A-sus, and you can also lift that finger to go down a step on that second string. C-suspended requires you to go up a half step on the fourth string. G-suspended requires you to do it on the fifth string. Learning suspended chords is a guitar playing tip you’ll find yourself using when you play contemporary songs.
I hope you’ve found these guitar playing tips helpful. It’s important to remember that the best way to improve your guitar playing skills is to practice, practice, practice. Good luck!
To learn how to play guitar, visit this site: jamorama. jamorama is a complete course in playing the guitar. Read our jamorama review and make the smart choice!
Many guitarists don’t have enough time to practice for long periods of time. But if you want to progress fast, you need the guitar in your hands as regularly as possible.
It’s better to practice for 10-20 minutes every day, than 4 hours on just one day of the week.Getting into a rhythm of regularly picking up your guitar for a quick practice session is a great habit to get into.
So if you don’t have enough time for a full practice session, and you have 10-15 minutes to spare, here’s some ideas for what you should practice:
Practice a chord change.
Perhaps switching from an F barre chord to a D open is causing you difficulty?
If you spend just ten minutes going over and over the change, you will increase your ability to do it at the level you require.
The key is to focus, and hone in on one skill that you can improve in a short period of time.
Work on a song you want to memorize.
This will give you a chance to actually play some music! You need to have fun in your practice to keep you fresh and focused.
Listen to a song on a CD and jam along.
This is a great way to improve your playing, and it’s particularly suitable for short practice sessions.
An important part of learning guitar is to train your ear, and jamming along to a CD is the perfect way to do it.
Work on a lick you want to learn.
You’d be surprised how many times you can work through a lick in just a few short minutes. You can also combine this practice technique with practicing chord changes.
This will improve your skills in a short period of time.
Work on picking skills – do drills up and down the neck.
You can use your metronome to work on speed picking skills, or you can slow everything right down and work on keeping your body in a relaxed so that you develop an ease to your playing.
Work up and down a scale.
In ten minutes you can play through a scale around 50-100 times. This will improve your stamina and also help you build speed.
Remember to use a metronome when you’re trying to build speed though. Because you want a smooth rhythmic sound to your speed picking, not a struggling, hurried sound.
So build up gradually.
Be Creative!
Play some chords in combinations that sound good to you, or play some single note melodies. Again, this improves your ear and you could maybe work out some parts to a song of your own.
Okay, that’s all the ideas I’m going to give you for now. Use your imagination to come up with more things you could try, and mix it up so it doesn’t get boring.
Also, keep your guitar ready and set-up. Sure, it’s protected all hidden away in your case, but if it’s ready for you to have a short practice session, then you’re more likely to pick it up and practice, even if it is just for a short time.
So keep that guitar out and ready to practice!
You may not think these short practice sessions help much, but doing this builds up your skills fast – and you’ll surprise yourself by how much you improve just be having the guitar in your hands regularly.
However, you don’t want to solely rely on these quick practice sessions. Like most things, you need to strike a balance. A good way of finding that balance is to set a routine.
When you have a routine, you will find it gets easier to find the time for practice. Once you’re in a habit of practicing regularly, you’ll find it harder to break out of, and that’s a good habit to have!
To learn how to play guitar, visit this site: jamorama acoustic. jamorama acoustic is a complete set of lessons for playing the guitar. Read our jamorama acoustic review and make the smart choice!
“Gone are the times when someone who wanted to learn the guitar had to adjust their schedule and travel to a class. Today the internet has taken over as the most reliable source of learning guitar from the comforts of one’s home. The lessons start with the basics of playing guitar and one can gradually start at their own pace with these lessons. The basic lessons include a step by step guide on different chords, holding the guitar, strings, etc. The lessons then gradually continue with the advanced techniques of playing the guitar in all levels and styles.
One can learn to play either an acoustic guitar or electric guitar or both techniques of playing either style is slightly different. Lernguitar.net can help one master both the techniques. In a space of just two weeks one can start playing the guitar confidently in front of a small family gathering or even a party. One can even imitate the style of their favorite guitar players by learning from the internets top instructors such as Sonya Perricone, Rick Napolitano and Don Lappin. The site contains hundreds of compositions from the world’s best guitar artists.
All the lessons are placed in a continuous flow so that you don’t get lost in the mix. The site is unlike any other free guitar lessons site where guitar lessons are just posted without caring about the order. The site also shares the secrets of the Pro’s which have made them what they are today. One can follow in their footsteps and become a professional guitar playing artist himself by learning through learnguitar.
Next on the list of imparting lessons is learning the tricks of mastering the different scales on the guitar. Mastering scales requires a lot of practice but Learnguitar makes it easy and enjoyable. The best part of the site is that it encourages the learner to try out the different styles with a lot of confidence. One can master more than one style and be good at both of them. Apart from mastering scales, the site also teaches you how to become perfect at playing chords and rhythm. The best part of playing any musical instrument is that if one plays it in the correct manner one gets a lot of confidence and motivation to continue the learning process and this is the sole purpose of Learnguitar.
Apart from techniques one can also concentrate on a particular style of playing the guitar like Jazz, Metal, Country, Funk, Blues and Rock. All the lessons are in the form of easy to read printouts and videos. Learnguitar guarantees that even a beginner who does not know the ABC’s of guitar playing will become a pro if they seriously spend time with the video guitar lessons and practices playing the guitar regularly. “
To learn how to play guitar, visit this site: jamorama. jamorama is a complete course in playing the guitar. Read our jamorama review and make the smart choice!
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