Learn to play the guitar online

10/01/202324/01/2023

How to begin playing the guitar

First, if you don’t have a guitar, don’t buy one right away. Borrow one from a friend. You’ll buy one that fits your needs once you have started to play and have figured out what type of guitar is right for you.

Once you have found a guitar, if you don’t have a tuner, you can use a tuning fork, or find a video like this one to get the right notes.

Martin Taylor explains how to tune your guitar, and how to verify its tuning.

James Taylor (same family name, different family…) demonstrates his approach to (fine) tuning.

Once your guitar is tuned, pick a song that you like, preferably a folk song that you know well and that you can sing. It could be You are my sunshine or Row, row your boat, or any song that has been part of your musical upbringing. Here is You are my sunshine in the key of G, but there are many others that show how to play the chords in different keys.

21/10/201803/07/2023

5 ways to master the guitar

Over the years, the musical instrument that has ruled over the masses is the guitar. From swinging and swaying along a soft rhythm, to the fast paced swag, it has caught many of us spell-bounded. We try to follow in the footsteps of our heroes like Jimi Hendrix, Tommy Emmanuel, Bonnie Raitt or Prince, dedicating hours of practice and hundreds of dollars to learn the art of playing guitar, but more often than not we fail miserably.

It is true that there is no alternative to hard work, but one should also follow a fixed plan to make it work, so that the hard work we put in does not get wasted. Some will want to know where all the notes are on their fingerboard and will subscribe to sites such as Guitar Notes Master to achieve that.
The most important thing is to get started and improve on it. These five basic tips should prove fruitful to you if you put your heart and soul in playing Guitar.

1. All that glitters is not gold holds true for most of the guitars you lay your hands on. A costly guitar doesn’t mean that it will have the most melodious of tune and best of the parts. While buying a guitar always select something with good built material, else you sound could die down or become shaky. Also check for the string stoutness and if you instrument gets out of tune too often you should look for an alternative.

2. The next important thing is that you should learn the basics well, either from a guide book or a teacher. You must know the different chords and your finger position. Practice the basics with proper finger position till it becomes just a muscle memory. You should also learn to pick up speed while you play and execute them without any gap between each note. Continue reading “5 ways to master the guitar”

27/03/201721/10/2018

Three steps to learning to play the guitar

Do you want to learn how to play the guitar? If you do, please read on: this is how you can teach yourself guitar with three easy steps.

First, you need to get a guitar. You do not need an expensive one though. You can buy a second hand guitar. As long as the action is good – the strings’ height above the neck, that would work just fine. If you’re not sure, ask a guitar-playing friend for help. Now you may be asking, “Why can’t I just borrow my friend’s guitar”. Well you can, but you should still buy one for yourself because one day, you are going to have to return the borrowed instrument to its rightful owner. By purchasing your own guitar, you know that it is yours and yours only. That gives you the freedom to develop a connection with your guitar. It’s also important to choose the guitar that’s right for you, depending on what style of music you want to play: classical, folk, blues, rock, jazz, and all the different genres that evolved from these. Sites like this one may help. Continue reading “Three steps to learning to play the guitar”

27/03/201710/01/2023

How to get results from guitar practice

How To Get Tons Of Results From Guitar Practice And Become A Better Guitarist Fast If you’re not already subscribing to sites like “Express Guitar“, maybe you find that your guitar-playing goals are hard to reach due to a lack of available practice time or limited knowledge? I’ve got some good news for you. You can very quickly achieve your guitar playing goals – you just need to understand exactly how to make your practice time extremely effective.

Some guitarists use their practice time very ineffectively. By wasting practice time, they drastically prolong the time it takes to reach their musical goals. But if you are able to get results from every single second of guitar practice, your progress will skyrocket.

Here are the four guitar practicing habits you need to correct in order to make faster progress:

1. Practicing Some Items too Much and Others too Little

This mistake is commonly made because of the following:

1. Improperly managed Guitar Practicing Time. A lot of guitar players practice everything for an equal amount of time. This is incorrect. Truth is: not all musical skills need to be practiced with the same frequency as others. Technical guitar licks may require a higher frequency of practice with moderate time used each session. When you randomly divide up the time spent on each task into equal segments, you end up scheduling a lot more time than what is needed for some items and not enough for others. As a result, you make slow progress in all areas.

2. Instant Gratification Practice. it’s common for guitar players to waste time practicing things they are already highly proficient in. As a result, they never actually advance in the areas they are weak in, bringing their overall guitar playing down as a whole.

How you divide up your guitar practice time also depends on some other variables. These include: how much time you have to practice, how good you are at each item, your personal guitar playing goals, and how certain items are best practiced and mastered. When any of this is altered, you need to change your practicing routine. If you don’t, you’ll end up with unbalanced skills and ineffective practice.

2. Working on Elements of Guitar Playing in an Incorrect Order

The particular order of items you practice is instrumental for how much/little improvement each practice session offers you. This applies on both a small level and a zoomed-out, macro level. Macro level meaning: the various types of musical skills (such as guitar playing technique, theory, ear training, etc.). The smaller level means the specific exercises within each area. To make your practice more effective, you need to identify the best order for both the types of musical skills and the specific exercises within each category.
Continue reading “How to get results from guitar practice”