Why do you want to play guitar? What do you want to get out of your guitar playing? Why practice? — to master a new tune? to learn to sight-read? to get faster? to pass the audition? Even if you don’t realize it we all practice to achieve some guitar-playing goal. To get the most out … Read more
Many players are unsure how they should be holding the guitar. Others simply haven’t given it much thought. Bad habits will hold back your playing, make it unnecessarily difficult for them to play the guitar, or will cause awkwardness or discomfort, and can even contribute to strain and injury. Good habits will improve your playing, … Read more
One of the most daunting and potentially expensive things that people learning electric guitar often have to deal with is buying their first electric guitar.If your dad or your roommate or somebody has a guitar and they’re happy to let you use it, then lucky you. You’ve dodged a bullet man; just keep playing that … Read more
When you first learn guitar, there is an entire vocabulary of brand new words you come across. Here are some of the most basic of them explained:Parts of the guitarNeckThis is a guitar neckThe neck is the “middle” of the guitar, with one end attached to the body, and one end attached to the headstock. … Read more
A reader asked me about whether some materials would be better or worse depending on whether you wanted to play rhythm guitar or lead guitar. And it made me think, I get asked something along these lines fairly often. Usually new guitarists want to know which is more important to learn, or which is “better”. … Read more
Are you new to playing guitar, and not sure how you should go about learning? There are a number of different ways you can get Guitar Instruction. The best way to go about it depends who you are and what stage you are at. Here are the common was to learn guitar, and the advantages … Read more
“In ‘The Paradox of Choice’, Barry Schwartz spends a lot of time talking about maximizing and satisficing. Maximizing is finding the best choice or option. Satisficing is finding one thing that works and doing it. We need to spend more time satisficing and less time looking for the ideal solution or the ideal technical routine or … Read more
Many guitar players have trouble attaching an acoustic guitar strap to their instrument, unlike the electric guitar most acoustics only come with one strap button located at the base of the instrument. Despite the fact that this problem is rather easy to solve, most acoustic players never actually get round to attaching a strap to … Read more
In my previous post I talked about the source of improvisation, your inner jukebox. Your inner jukebox fuels your ability to improvise, it is your inspiration, it is the tool by which you express yourself as an individual. If you can tune into your inner jukebox, tap into the musical ideas that it generates, and … Read more
I believe that true guitar mastery can be directly judged by a player’s ability to improvise. You can learn all the technique you want, know all the theory, be able to play any song beautifully -no matter how technically difficult- with all its dynamic subtleties, and to me you’d be merely good. But to be … Read more