Learning how to play the guitar and learning how to write songs are two different sets of skills. It took me a long time to understand this. As a consequence it took me longer to start writing songs due to my false belief that I needed to get better on the guitar before I could. …
In this lesson I will show you how to understand and read time signatures. You will also be given musical examples to play on the guitar to get the feel of different time signatures in music. What are time signatures? If you look at the beginning of any piece of music, next to the treble …
How to Read Time Signatures (with guitar tab exercises) Read More »
When you’re a beginner on the guitar you spend most of your practice time learning new skills. You start from knowing nothing and you have to figure out how to place your fingers, hold the pick, strum, read guitar tabs and play your first chords and songs, among many other things. As you reach an …
Intermediate Guitar Lesson: How to Integrate Your Skills Read More »
It takes more than playing scales up and down to create a good guitar solo. However, scale runs – ascending or descending a scale using linear, repetitive or staggered movements – are an important component of soloing and a good source of ideas. Scale runs can be used to create content for your solo, to …
Guitar scales are usually taught using either the CAGED system or 3 note per string patterns. 3 note per string scale patterns are much more efficient than CAGED. Tommaso Zillio explains perfectly why this is the case. Click here if you’re undecided which system to use to learn scales. Guitar scales on one string are …
How To Learn (and use) Guitar Scales On One String Read More »
In this lesson I gave you a step by step process you can use to start writing songs with the guitar. In today’s lesson we’ll delve deeper on an important topic for songwriters: Diatonic chord progressions. A chord progression is a series of two or more chords played in an order. Diatonic chords are chords …
Diatonic chord progressions for the guitarist-songwriter Read More »
Q: Can electric guitarists use a simpler way of reading music than standard notation? A: Yes, reading guitar tabs (or tablature) is much easier than reading standard music notation. Q: If they’re simpler, are guitar tabs less complete? Do they tell you everything you need to know about the music you’re reading as standard music …
How to Read Electric Guitar Tabs (with exercises) Read More »
Double picking on the guitar simply means playing the same note twice in the same amount of time. In the next examples the note is first played, then double picked. In Ex. 1 a quarter note (crotchet) is divided in two eight notes (quavers) while in Ex. 2 an eight note is divided in …
5 Double Picking Exercises To Improve Your Guitar Speed and Accuracy Read More »
The guitar solo is the part where the guitarist is on the spot and expected to show his abilities. Thus, easy guitar solos are less common than say, easy guitar riffs. Some guitarists do play fast and complex riffs at times, but even guitarists who play super fast like James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett (Metallica) …
5 Easy/Intermediate Guitar Solos That Gradually Get Harder Read More »
Heavy Metal is not an easy genre to play on the guitar. When I started learning the guitar I was a strictly Metal guy and this caused me a lot of frustration since I couldn’t play the music I really loved. After a year of heavy practicing I joined my first Metal band, only to …
10 Heavy Metal Guitar Tips For Beginners In The Genre Read More »
