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10 Easy Tips For Beginning Guitar

Monday, February 13th, 2012

beginner guitarFor music lovers, there’s nothing quite like the Grammy awards, and last night certainly didn’t disappoint.  But it was one simple quote from Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl that really made an impression on us. In his acceptance speech for Best Rock Performance, Grohl said humbly, “To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what’s most important.  Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do.  It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in the computer, it’s about what goes on in [your heart] and it’s about what goes on in [your head].”

We couldn’t have said it better. Passion, inspiration, motivation – that’s what it’s all about.  Forget flashy performances and shock value – you can do great things with just an acoustic guitar and well-crafted lyrics.  Yet for some reason, many of us out there still think up excuses for not picking up the guitar.  We say we’re too busy, it’s too hard, we don’t have any other musical training, and it hurts our fingers.  In actuality, it’s really quite simple.  If you want to learn the guitar, do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re ten years old or sixty years old – anyone can learn to play, and anyone can make time to practice.

As Grohl said, you don’t have to be perfect.  Just start simply.  Take it one step at a time.  And for a little extra guidance, here are 10 guitar tips for the absolute beginner:

1 – Make sure you choose the right guitar for your size. Guitars come in different sizes from classic to jumbo. It is very important that you find a guitar size that you are comfortable playing.
2 – Learn how to change your guitar strings.  The dirt and oil on your fingers and hands builds up on your strings over time and will ruin their sound. It is therefore extremely important that you learn how to change your strings.  How often you change them will depend on how often you play.
3 – Build up those calluses. Many beginners complain of pain in their fingertips when first starting out. This is normal and will go away after you have been playing for a little while and start to form calluses. The more often you practice the faster you will build up calluses.
4 – Learn how to tune your guitar. Make sure your guitar is in tune before you start every practice session. Tuning your guitar is really quite easy. You can either purchase one of those small battery powered guitar tuners, or you can easily find a tuner online.
5 – Find a good guitar teacher. While it is possible to learn at your own pace at home using free guitar lessons online, books and guitar home study courses, nothing can really replace a guitar teacher. A guitar teacher will help keep you from forming bad guitar playing habits and praise you when you are making progress.
6 – Stretch and warm up your hands and fingers before each playing session. This is important. Proper warm up and stretching exercises are essential in helping you avoid injury and improving your guitar playing.
7 – Learn about the parts of your guitar. Spend as much time as possible familiarizing yourself with all the various parts of your guitar and how it is constructed.
8 – Don’t overdo it. If you are experiencing any pain or discomfort during your playing or practice session, stop and take a break.
9 – Try and learn something new. If you continually do the same thing, day after day, then your guitar playing will become stagnant and you will not progress.
10 – Go to live performances. This will give you a chance to get up close and personal with the musicians, enabling you to see first-hand how a professional plays.

See what we mean?  Start out simple, and pretty soon you’ll be working your way up to the more complicated chords and songs.  Do you have your own tips to share?  Leave us a comment!

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You might also like…

-Purchase the Perfect Beginner Guitar With These Easy Steps
- So You Got a Guitar for the Holidays… What’s Next?
- 5 Ways to Practice Without Your Guitar

 

Photo by Jono Colliver.

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Posted in Guitar, Performing | 4 Comments »

Practice Tips: Exercises and Guitars for Small Hands

Friday, February 10th, 2012

Former Beatles bandmember Paul McCartney is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most successful musician and composer in popular music history,” and now he finally has the Hollywood mark of success – a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

McCartney has had 32 number-one hits in the US, 24 in the UK, and was even named the Greatest Composer of the Millenium by BBC Online News readers.  Let’s see today’s top artists rack up a list of accomplishments like that!

With the growing popularity of dance music on the charts these days, rock seems to have been pushed a bit to the side.  The Grammy Awards will even be featuring a dance-focused segment this year, for the first time ever.  But there’s nothing like the feeling of picking up a shiny new guitar and strumming your first chord.  Rock music isn’t dead – we promise.

Yesterday we discussed some common beginner instruments for children, and guitar is definitely a popular choice.  But one issue that young beginners and many adults run into is learning to play the guitar with small hands.  If you’ve experienced the frustration of not quite reaching a certain finger placement, it doesn’t mean you need to give up your future star on the Walk of Fame.  These tips for playing guitar with small hands should help:

Choose a Guitar with a Comfortable Neck
Every guitar is different. Some have broad necks, others have narrow necks. If you have small hands, a guitar with a narrow neck will make playing more natural and more enjoyable. Some guitars even come in 3/4- or short-scale models, making the instrument more compact and accessible to those with smaller hands.

Get Your Thumb in Position
Many players let the thumb of their fretting hand go lazy when playing chords or individual lines. Try positioning your thumb directly center under the fretboard and use it as a guide as you play.

Stretch Those Fingers
Even guitar players with large hands can benefit from “stretching out” and working on exercises to increase one’s span across the fretboard. Work on stretching your fingers by incorporating into your practice routine exercises that demand distance leaps. Start on the low E-string and play an F (first fret) with your index finger, then play a G# (fourth fret) with your ring or pinky finger – whatever works best – and follow this pattern across all six strings.

Don’t Fret over Barre Chords
Without question, the most difficult chords to play for folks with small hands are barre chords, where the index finger is required to fret sometimes all six guitar strings, acting as an anchor for the placement of other fingers to fill out the chord. If your hands are too small to span the entire fretboard, try using your thumb to hold down the low bass string to form a barre chord. To play an F-major chord this way, you’ll bring your hand around the neck, almost wrapping it. Then, get the fingers in position: Fret the high E- and B-strings (first fret) with your index finger; place your middle finger on the second fret of the G-string; your pinky on the third fret of the D-string; your ring finger on the third fret of the A-string; lastly, put your thumb on the first fret of the low E-string and strum.

Your guitar teacher is a great resource as well, and can help you determine the best exercises for you.  (Need help finding a teacher nearby?  Click here!) Like these posts?  Sign up to receive daily updates right to your inbox!  Click here to subscribe.

 


 

Photo by Roblawol.

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Posted in Guitar, Music Lessons for Children | 2 Comments »

5 Tips for Smooth and Efficient Guitar Chord Transitions

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Beginning guitar lessons is an exciting thing – learning the notes, building your first chord, and of course, playing your first song.  However, it’s not all sunshine and roses.  Learning to play takes commitment, practice and the motivation to get over some common beginner hurdles.  First, the painful process of building calluses can drive many to stop practicing.  Second, there’s always that awkward stage of learning to seamlessly transition to different chords.  You know the drill -  practice makes perfect.  But here are some additional tips from Teachstreet.com to help with switching chords:

1. Keep your fingers as close to the fret board as possible.  When that pinkie and third finger start flying out in space it takes longer for them to come back down.

2. Build your chords from the bottom string up.  For some reason a lot of us get in the habit of building our chords from the top down.  Like in an open C major chord, starting with the 2nd string, then 4th, then 5th.  The problem with that is your pick is going to hit the bottom strings first, so get those notes placed first.  That extra split second will give you a chance to get the last top bits of the chord in place.  I know it seems like a negligible amount of time, but you’ll be surprised how it can improve your guitar playing.

3. When moving from one chord to the next, move the finger that has the farthest to go first.  For instance, in moving from G major to C major in the open position, your first finger has to move all the way from the 5th string to the second.  Lead with that finger and you’ll find that your other fingers naturally pull along behind to end up close to their intended frets as well.

4.  Stay relaxed and let the natural movement of your hands help you get to the chord.  Believe it or not, the guitar is actually designed very well to accommodate the natural movement of the human hand.  When you use tip #3 and lead with the farthest finger, your other fingers will follow along behind it naturally and you can get them to settle in the right place.  If you tighten up they won’t move as naturally, so stay loose.

5. Keep your right hand moving.  The way your brain works has a lot to do with how your hands react.  As a beginner, your brain is giving you permission to stop in between chords and rationalizes it as “we’ll get it eventually.”  It’s normal and happens on a subconscious level.  You can easily change that by setting up a dissonance in your brain.  That means presenting your brain with a problem it needs to fix.  Here’s the way it works:  You brain loves when your hands are moving together.  So if you force your right hand to keep strumming, no matter what happens in your left, your brain will want to solve that dissonance by making your left hand move faster to keep up with your right.  Exactly what we’re looking for.

Looking for a guitar teacher who can help you master chord transitions even faster?  Search for a guitar teacher near you here.

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You might also like…
- Learn to Play 20 Songs Using 5 Easy Guitar Chords
- 5 Common Mistakes of Beginner Guitarists
- How to Clean Your Guitar: 4 Easy Steps

Photo by lemuelinchrist.

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5 Ways to Practice Without Your Guitar

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher can now add “Godlike Genius” to his resume.  NME, a UK-based music publication, gives the award to one musician each year, to be presented at the annual NME awards gala in February.

What makes a guitarist a genius, exactly?  With previous winners like Dave Grohl, the Clash, and the Cure, Gallagher has some big shoes to fill.

Don’t have hours upon hours to commit to practicing?  That’s ok.  In fact, there are ways of practicing your guitar skills without actually having your guitar with you.  Check out these great tips from Jemsite.com about how to practice sans guitar:

1. Learn The Fretboard
The better you know your fretboard, the better you know your instrument and the more easily you can move around it. Here’s one technique to try: slip a small fretboard diagram into your wallet so you’ll carry it around with you everywhere. When you have two spare minutes, you can pull out your chart and name notes to help memorize them. If you don’t have the slip of paper handy, you can use visualization exercises. Picture a fretboard in your mind, pick some notes, and “see” where they occur on the fretboard image.

2. Learn About Chords
No matter how long you’ve been playing, there is always something new to learn about chords. Look around for sources of new ideas or information, find yourself some chord theory books, or study the chords used by great songwriters.

3. Visualization
Use visualization to work on all kinds of guitar skills. Visualization is the process of picturing a situation in your mind as if it were real. It has been proven that visualization stimulates the same nerve paths as actually performing actions, so it helps to reinforce your learning.  Use visualization to practice chord changes and progressions, scales and licks, picking patterns, and whole songs.

4. Develop Your Ears
As you listen to music and other sounds in the street, try to pick out the sound of certain intervals or notes. For example, you can designate a “major thirds day” where you try to spot major third sounds around you.

5. Study Music Notation
Many self-taught guitarists neglect music reading and writing skills. Carry around some sheet music and you can practice reading it during your lunch break or on the bus.

And there you have it – now having a “day job” is no excuse to forgo practicing!  Even if you’re strained for time, you can find a way to make it work.  What do you think of these tips? Anything you’d like to add?  Sound off below – and don’t forget to share with your friends if you liked these ideas!

Like these posts?  Sign up to receive daily updates right to your inbox!  Click here to subscribe.

 

You might also like…
- 10 Quick Guitar Exercises for the Busy Musician
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Photo by Anirudh Koul.

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3 Crucial Tools to Help You Learn Guitar

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Guitar toolsThe Black Keys’ drummer Patrick Carney told Rolling Stone magazine recently that Nickelback is killing off the rock genre.  Agree?  Disagree?

There will always be rivalries in the music industry, but whomever you side with, one thing is for certain: they all started out as complete beginners at one point.  So if you’re just a beginner now, it will be up to you to determine who you’ll want to end up like.

But first, you’ll need some important tools.  Take a look at this great list from ultimate-guitar.com for the most essential tools for beginner guitar players:

Essential tool 1: Metronome

A metronome is crucial to developing many skills. Most players already know this, but if you haven’t used one yet then get your hands on one. There are a few different types you can get. You can get a software version (normally for free) for your computer or iPhone (most phones can get one). The second type is the physical pendulum type you see with a metal arm ticking back and forth. The third type is a digital version. This type could be as basic as providing a simple click or as complicated as generating a stack of rhythms and loops.

Things you can do with a metronome:
• Develop your rhythm abilities
• Practice fast/complicated licks or solos
• Improve your speed picking/playing
• Master techniques such as tapping or sweep picking
• Develop your strumming patterns

Essential tool 2: Rhythm generator/drum looper

There are many different names and labels for this tool. Basically, it is a little box where you can choose a style of music (such as blues, rock, metal, swing, etc.) and it will play a drum beat that fits that style, at a tempo you choose. The better ones will also allow you to choose a key and it will play a progression in that key with the drums for you to jam over. They normally have hundreds of different options and you have full control over how everything sounds. Instead of buying a digital metronome, if it’s in your budget you may want to get one of these instead. All of them will have a metronome option to give you a simple click.

Here are some things you could try with a rhythm generator:
• Learn how to jam in a style you have never tried before
• Write solos and licks in different keys and different styles
• Write song ideas and riffs that fit with different drums patterns
• Practice scales and learn what sound or ‘flavor’ they give your playing

Essential tool 3: Flash cards, chord charts, and chord dictionaries

These three tools will all help you learn a range of different chords in different ways. Chord charts are normally a poster or page with a selection of chord diagrams. You can buy ones large enough to stick on your wall or they sometimes come with books. Chord dictionaries are just like they sound – a dictionary full of chords. Chord dictionaries can contain up to a couple hundred different chords. Flash cards are like a pack of playing cards where each card displays a chord diagram and other information.

Using these tools will help you develop your chord vocabulary. The more chords you know, the more options you have. More choices of chords will give your songs more interesting sounds and will have a big impact on your songwriting or improvising. The average beginner will know about 10 basic open chords, whereas the expert guitarist will know over a hundred different options all over the neck. Don’t underestimate how important it is to learn more chords! Even expert players continue to learn new chord shapes.

Here are some things you can do using chord flash cards, dictionaries and charts:
• Learn more chords
• Write interesting chord progressions and songs
• Improve chord progressions by finding more interesting chords
• Learn the notes behind the chord types (eg: major, minor, seventh, etc)
• Understand music with chord theory

Looking for a guitar teacher near you!  Search by zip code and find one here.


You might also like…
- 5 Common Mistakes of Beginner Guitarists
- 5 Tips for Smooth and Efficient Guitar Chord Transitions
- How to Clean Your Guitar: 4 Easy Steps

 

Image courtesy of http://fretterverse.com/2010/04/20/practice-with-a-metronome/

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