Like most kids 20 years ago, my first guitar was a complete piece of crap. I bought it 2nd hand from a pawn shop for about 45 Irish pounds – wow, showing my age here more and more! The currency in Ireland now is the Euro. They guy who sold it to me was fat and eating chips behind the counter.

It was a black and white Les Paul copy with an action so high that I could hardly press the strings down. But none of it mattered… I was consumed with an uncontrollable passion to teach myself how to play guitar. That was all there was to it and nothing was going to stand in my way.

Think that’s dedication? Well get this…

I also quit school early so that I could spend all my time practicing. That’s dedication. I can’t explain it really. I just knew what I wanted in life very early. It was simple, a no-brainer.

In those days I really wanted to play like Slash from Guns n’ Roses so i worked on learning all their songs, especially the solo from “Sweet Child O’ Mine“. What a masterpiece.

Finger style guitar is a very common way to play through songs where you are performing the baseline, the harmony and the melody line simultaneously. Travis style fingerpicking it’s a sub-genre of finger style guitar and it got its name after Merle Travis who in turn learned it from Mose Rager. in fact, this style of guitar playing can be traced back to the music traditions of Eastern Kentucky.

In its earliest form was played and developed by blues guitarists such as Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Blake. therefore many believe that this style of guitar playing should in fact be named after one of them however it was Merle who brought it to the mainstream and wider public appeal say he was credited for it’s development.

You can easily recognize Travis picking by the fact that it has a constant alternating bass line being played while the melody sings along over the top of it. In early blues this style was known and Piedmont Blues and you can still hear the early recordings today that have been cleaned up as much as possible and put into digital format. The sound is hardly Hi-Fi but for any blues enthusiast it’s a goldmine of music.

Technically in order to play Travis style picking you need to be able to establish be alternating bass notes as being completely independent from the melody line for which is being played above it. This can take some practice to achieve however it is essential that you can maintain this constant alternating bass regardless of what you’re playing over the top of it. The best way to learn how to do this is to follow in sequence a series of exercises on guitar which gradually teach your fingershow to isolate one element from the other.

And What About Barre Chords?

Travis picking is mostly played using open chords as the open strings allow for many suspensions to happen as chords transfer from one to another however it’s also employed extensively with barre chords such as in Rockabilly (for a great course on barre chords click here) and you should check out Chet Atkins for examples of how awesome this style of guitar can sound. This is were acoustic style travis fingerpicking got modernized into electric guitar and the mainstream.

Guitar Songwriting

Songwriting can come out of anything. The inspiration can be a result of anything and nothing at all at the same time. Most of the time, songs are made from guitars. It is the most accessible instrument, wherever you are, as long as you have the guitar, it’s all good. You can’t bring a piano with you everywhere. That is why the guitar is probably the most popular instrument that you could write a song with. Also, writing a song on a guitar is also much more comfortable and easier. Right now, I’ll tell you my way of writing songs out of a guitar.

Guitar Songwriting – 101

First, pick up your guitar and let your imagination and your creativity fly off the limits. Then conceptualize that idea into something that is playable on the guitar. You can think about the effects, the whole structure and stuff but also prioritize the backbone of the song. You could start with a bunch of chord progressions, a riff, a melody, a lick, or even a rip off of a popular song or just any existing song. Then, let it take you places. Build a chord progression out of it. You could start with a chorus or a verse but chorus usually works.

Guitar Songwriting – music and lyrics

There are no rules in writing a song. Once you have made a progression, add some words to it. Now this is the hard part. Personally I’m not a good lyricist. So what I do, whatever thought I have at the very moment, I write it down. And it’s funny that it would become a song and it would also sound good. Like some cryptic message underneath the lyrics but it’s just something I blurted out of the blue on the process of guitar songwriting.

Guitar Playing Tips

Guitar Playing Tips

Just like the old Beatles song goes “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.” You can definitely improve your guitar playing with the help of some friends or in your case, with my help. Yeah, we are friends from now on. Anyway, because you are my friend, I’ll be giving you some tips on how to improve your guitar playing. Many beginner guitar players fail early on this part because they lack these tips; they are trying to do everything on their own. That is why failure is always welcomed on their side. But thanks to me, that is will not happen.

Guitar Playing Tips – Improve your guitar playing

Here are some of the useful tips that I promised that would surely improve your guitar playing.

1. Try using chord charts. You can find these on guitar magazines or over the internet. This is a useful tool for you to be able to learn the different guitar chords. Very useful piece of equipment.
2. Do things one at a time. Learning guitar is like eating. You can’t take everything, shove it inside of your mouth and digest it. Take everything one at a time.

Guitar Playing Tips – Necessary Traits

But of course, these tips are useless if you lack the traits of a good guitar player.

1. Perseverance – this is important. If you want to make it, you must have something to push you on your back. Hard work and the will to persevere, you are going to need those.
2. Practice – yes, practice does make things perfect. Besides, it’s all about getting used to it and practice makes sure that you would definitely get used to it. it’s a simple process really try doing or listen to things over and over again, you will get used to it and you would never forget it.

Now that’s it for my guitar playing tips.

Practice always makes everything perfect, and if not, it would alleviate you into something better. But most of the time, we can’t help but accept the fact that it gets boring sometimes. I do believe that too. Especially when you are practicing scales. You have to do it over and over again. But that’s how it is. If you really want to learn, you have to overcome the boredom.

Fortunately for us, there is a way to overcome this. It’s neither a shortcut nor another scheme. It is simply a method of practicing scales. All you have to do is to find a way to spice up and improvise those scales so that they would look exciting and you wouldn’t get bored. That easy. So how do we start?

First, take the pentatonic E scale. Now, does it slowly at first then after a while try to add more notes to it? And then move up and down the fret board. I guarantee you that it is much more fun to do it that way. Sometimes, you don’t have to play the right scale; you just have to make your fingers move independently. Just make sure that the notes are in tune.

Do you want to spice up your guitar playing, especially your guitar soloing skills? Let me introduce you to some of the greatest guitar techniques that you could learn, just in case you haven’t heard about it yet. There are several dozen techniques that you could learn to create something new. You cannot do it with just staying with the old and boring single notes. So if you think that this is your way out of snoresville and you think you really have what it takes to progress, here’s an example of a guitar technique that you could use. The hammer on!
A hammer on is a technique used in guitar playing to spice up your guitar solos. It brings variety and life to the guitar solo by adding up a different method to do it. Usually, all we have to do is fret a note and pick it. To go to the next note, you fret it again and pick it again, which is kinda boring. But with the hammer on, you fret a note, pick it, and then to go to the next note, you simply hammer it with your ring finger or the any free finger in your left hand to fret the second note without having to pick it. Imagine doing it with a flurry of notes. Amazing.

When it comes to guitar accessories, here’s how to save a lot of trouble. There are plenty of guitar accessories that might catch your attention. These accessories are relatively inexpensive and if you are also buying a guitar, you might get a discount. So in this article, we shall briefly discuss the different guitar accessories that you need, the ones available in the market and other accessories that might catch your attention.
1. Guitar bag or case – if you are planning to play gigs or travel a lot, you should consider having this. You might not want to carry your guitar around with no protection at all. So a guitar bag or case could protect your guitar from bumps and scratches while you are moving around.
2. Guitar tuner – a must have for every guitar player. Tunes your guitar whenever it is needed. Comes in electronic with dial, electronic digital or the traditional tuning pipes. Whichever you prefer, it doesn’t matter as long as you are able to tune your guitar and not humiliate yourself.
3. Guitar strings – this is also considered as a gig essential. You should always have a lot of these when you’re doing a gig or travelling. We never know when your string would break.

Here is something to boost up your confidence. This is Steve Vai playing his epic “ I’m the hell outta here at the Crossroads guitar fest in 2004.  This is an absolutely stunning performance. Got my nose bleeding for three hours or so…

This is something that most beginner guitar players learn last. And this is also perhaps learned without anyone teaching you how to. It’s like talking, nobody taught you how to talk, someone maybe assisted you but to totally teach you, I guess not. Phrasing is very much important in guitar playing especially in guitar solos, in fact, it is always used in guitar solos, especially in blues. So if you want to know more how to blaze with phrasing, I have just the right info for you that you might find useful. This is to assist you on proper phrasing of notes so that your guitar solos would sound great. After you read this you would have a very vivid idea on what phrasing really is and you’ll start to appreciate it for what it is. So I urge you to read this post.

Phrasing is properly squeezing in notes in a measure or beats. It doesn’t matter how many as long as you can play it all in and the most important note that you should play in time with the beat is the first and the last note. For example, you have the 4 / 4 time signature, you can play however you like it inside the 1 and 4 counts but be urea to hit the 1 and the 4 count with the right note.

Have you experienced performing the worst gig of your lives due to sound system problems? There are so many factors that might affect it but here are some tips just to make sure you don’t experience screwing up on your gigs because  of a lousy P.A. system.

1. There are so many sources that result in blurry sound. However, and almost all the time, it is always an amplified instrument. Guitar amps are usually the suspect. This is because guitar players always turn up their amps after the first song, because they find it hard to hear themselves as they begin to play those first few chords.
2. To rule out this problem, always give the guitar player more of himself in his monitor mix. This will keep him from turning up on stage. Thus, you will be able to get a clear, legible vocal sound over everything else. The reason is that the guitar and vocal frequencies operate within similar ranges, but the guitar is always louder. So, if you can get the guitar at a reasonable volume onstage, you will have plenty of gain before feedback with your vocal channel at the front – of – house.

Naming your group is the second hardest thing to forming a band. It’s easy to go out and grab a band mate. The hardest part is creating songs, sometimes, and more so often, it isn’t the hardest because there are instances that your band mates has got all these creative juices flowing out of them. So we could optionally scratch that. But naming the band, this is one crazy task that a band has to do. A band must come up with something that they all like. Nowadays, they would just name their band from almost about anything. And the band names today are pretty long. Anyway, there are a few things you should consider before you go create a band name if you plan to get serious with your group. First things first, you should check up your band name with the registry for duplicate names. This is very much important if you don’t want to end up with a law suit because naming your band something similar to a registered band name is not legit. Many bands have experienced this. But don’t worry, you won’t get sued right there and then. You’ll get a warning first and then the judgment day.

To looking for ways to improve your guitar playing which is currently mediocre, here’s something that would boost up your performance.  Guitar techniques are displaced if that makes your guitar playing sound good and delicious.  Mastering all the guitar techniques would make you become one bad ass guitar player.  Since I cannot place all the guitar techniques all at once in one article, here’s one technique that is very useful.  It is called the hammer on.  Together with the pull off technique they are more popularly called slurs.  Hammer ons could help you create a smoother solid sound between notes.  It’s like saxophone playing a flurry of notes in one blow.

Now to do a hammer on, you must first determine which two different notes you are going to include on your hammer on.  For example, you have the G note on the second string and the A note on the same string.  Not to do the hammer on, you should pluck the first note and produce a sound on the second note by slamming your other finger on the other note.  That is the basic hammer on technique that beginners should firs practice.  Once they get the hang of it they could move on to more complicated hammer ons.

And you still in the band and have no plans of becoming famous, everything is so simple because you’re doing it for itself.  But once you step the foot forward, things will become different.  The industry is a monster that could be a ally or an enemy that would eat you all up.  Prevent that from happening here are some helpful tips that would help you on your way to stardom.

Always remember that no matter how good your music is, there will be people will hate it.  As long as more people love it and you hate it, you’re on the right track.  But flaws about rejection and don’t cry about it and also all the NO’S that you will hear.  Focus on the number of positive answers.  If no one eats a music or head over heels in love with it, that is not good.  A strong reaction is always better than indifference.  Never worry about making something with artistic or commercial value.  If either is done right, there’s no distinction between the two.  Should know how to choose the right repertoire when performing two different market or crowd.  You should have songs that fits with crowds A and also songs that would fit crowd B and C.

OK, since it’s blues month, I will let you all into a little secret of mine.  Ever since I started playing the guitar or even before that, we back when I was kid, I was really fascinated with the blues and rock and roll.  While the other kids are interested on something else, I was busy imitating my favorite musicians.  Up until now, now that I know how to play guitar, I have my own set of guitar players that I use as influence.  And I would like to share my top five best blues guitarists in the whole world.  Warning: this is just my opinion and not based on some sort of survey or something.  So don’t hate me for it.

Top five- john Mayer

-          I know that he’s a new guy in this field of music, not as big as the legends but admit it, he’s got the talent he’s got the blues.  It was clear from the exhibited on east john Mayer trio band and on his continuum album.

Top four – Eric Clapton

-          He’s the king of the so-called electric blues.  From his yard birds, cream, another acts, you know that the blues within him.  No argument of that.

Top three- BB king

-          He will never be out of the newest because he’s one of the most influential blues guitar players in the world.

Top Two – Jimi Hendrix

-          Although he’s not totally a blues guitar player, you could definitely county man because he I in fact one of the greatest guitar player who ever lived.  And that didn’t come from me.

Top one – Stevie ray Vaughn

-          There’s simply no argument here.  SRV is definitely the winner when it comes to blues music.  Influenced by Hendrix, rush, Lonnie Mack, buddy guy and other blues artists, he came out with his own original sound.

Maintaining your guitar is something that you should do with your money are like a part of you.  It’s like taking a bath; it is a necessity except of course for people were mentally subnormal and thinks that taking a bath is something evil.  So the main thing that you should do is make it a part of you are part of daily ritual.  Remember, maintaining a guitar includes cleaning it, making sure that it is in good condition and also checking its parts if it is still working well.  Of course you have to spend a little bit on it, but it is better than spending big time when it gets broken down.

So how do you maintain your guitar?  One thing that you could do is clean it every day.  Clean the strings polished to body and clean the neck.  Make sure that it is dust-free.  Let me tell you something about guitars, the number one killer of the guitars is moisture.  It could be moisture from any liquid but as long as it is capable of producing moisture, it is a threat to our beloved guitars.  So if you want to maintain it and give it a long life, keep it away from moisture are prevented from getting wet.

Performing on stage is a very tedious job indeed.  You don’t just go up there and play, you need to project, you need to perform and project and image at the same time.  If you notice, bands that have no stage performance at all are really boring to watch.  Imagine yourself in their position.  It is not a good thing.  That is why have your tips on how to make your band notice on stage.  All of these tips are very essential in your stage performance.  So listen closely.

First, you should play it like you mean it.  If the song is angry you should also feel and look like an angry person.  You must convey the emotion that you are currently feeling inside of the song to make it more effective.  The stage performance is all about communication and the crowd.  You don’t display for yourselves, there are also people watching you.  For guitar players, look up from the fretboard.  It’s no fun watching a band that stare blankly at their fretboards through the whole gig, so use the force and look up.

Make that effort with regard to your personal appearance.  You should look like the part.  Whether its sharp suits, ridiculous black metal clobber or nun outfits, it’s all good.  Remember to the first bite is with the eye.  Those bands that look awesome on stage are off to a head start.  Another good tip is you should talk to the crowd.  Communicate.  This way you’ll have the good performance.

If you are an aspiring guitar player and you want to learn how to play the guitar, you simply need a good lesson.  Most beginner guitar players tend to quit due too many factors that affect them.  Some simply don’t know where to start and how to start.  Some are stupid enough to figure out everything by themselves.  If your beginner to tell you this: this is not possible.  Yes it is true that most of that legendary guitar players are self taught, but that was long ago.  Nowadays we have all the resources that we need, so why bother doing everything yourself.  Some are just unlucky to be presented with the guitar lesson that is not effective and are using methods that are proven to not work.  Beginner guitar players need a rather specialized form of guitar lessons.  That is why their guitar lessons for beginners that are more effective than others.  If you one that lesson, you could check on the Internet some of the guitar lesson websites available.  Before you register, please check that they do have methods of teaching beginners that are effective.  Also try to consider checking if their lessons are well laid out and properly staged so that aspiring guitar players would have a hard time understanding it.

While searching the internet for new stuff, I saw these new breeds of guitar that blew me away. There was this GLASSTONES electric guitar, whose body is made up of glass and the Flash Carbon Fiber Composite guitar, which is made up of carbon fiber. These guitars are the new innovation on guitar technology. The composition is now the focus. Glass is said to be capable of creating more sustain. But carbon fiber is insanely good at this. I saw the video of the carbon fiber guitar and the sustains are insanely long. It is also lightweight and virtually unbreakable because of its composition. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. The only thing I don’t like about the carbon fiber guitar is the design. The looks of the guitar sucks. But of course, they could do something with that. Anyway, with regards to looks, the Glasstones is the king. It looks like an Ibanez with glass parts. The sound is okay, the tone, still guitar – like, but the sustain have changed. It packs a little more sustain than normal guitars which is a good thing for us guitar players because that is what we search for in a guitar.

When practicing guitar, I have this habit of recording it. I record all of my practice session, everything and every day. Why do I do it? Well, one reason is to listen to my guitar playing. I could easily spot a mistake or check if I am making some improvements. You would also be conscious while practicing because you know it’s recorded. Another reason why I record my sessions is because I might play a certain riff that would be perfect for a song if you know what I am saying. There are golden moments where you accidentally play a riff that is awesomely perfect for a song. And what would suck more than not being to remember it because you didn’t record it. So as a precaution, I record my sessions.

Out of these recorded sessions, I created 5 songs in one month. Because of the recorded sessions, was able to pick up some riffs that I unconsciously created. Piece it all together and came up with songs. This is one great way to create music and also a great way to monitor your improvement on playing the guitar. (And know also how you suck so badly) either way, this is a good way to play guitar.

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It’s a regular thing; it’s something every guitar player must do. To be good in playing the guitar – regardless of whether you are taking beginner guitar lessons or advanced, you should get familiar with every technique, every fret and note on your guitar and there’s nothing better in getting yourself familiar with these things than practice. It’s something that you should do, even with other stuff that you do, practice does makes things perfect. Even legendary guitar players still practice until now. Steve Vai practices around 10 hours per day. You see how dedication to practice is important? You won’t rise up a level if you don’t practice even if you have new stuff to learn, of course, the obvious action is to practice it. But if you would only practice it once or twice, that won’t do you any good, in fact, the only thing that could make you progress up to higher levels is practice, and that is a fact my friend. If you want things to be simple, put it this way, No Pain, No Gain. No Practice, No Progress. That is why the only thing that I could advise to all aspiring guitar players all over the world is to practice, practice like you are a complete noob. Even if you are already good, practice still. This is the only way to become great.