Articles
- What To Look For In Your First Guitar: A Quick GuideWhen I started I had no idea of what to look for in a guitar. I remember when I was young and my dad would blast guitar music on the stereo all I wanted to do was to be able to play the solo from Johnny B Goode. Was it expensive? Not at all! Your… Read more: What To Look For In Your First Guitar: A Quick Guide
- Why I Found Guitar Lessons So UsefulThere seems to be infinite ways of learning the guitar. Many of them are even free. Through YouTube or online videos. Finding tabs and chord sheets online for your favourite songs and searching the chord shapes. Plus there are endless apps you can use that help to ‘make a game’ out of learning guitar (the… Read more: Why I Found Guitar Lessons So Useful
- How to get improvising and making up your own guitar solosWhile improvising and making up your own lead parts is exciting, many people find it intimidating. Where do I start? What do I need to do? Am I good enough to make up my own solos yet? You can start to learn to improvise much sooner than you probably think. If you know a scale… Read more: How to get improvising and making up your own guitar solos
- Guitar Grades – Should I Take Them or Am I Better Avoiding Them?Having completed Grade 8 in Electric Guitar Playing through the Registry of Guitar Tutors (RGT), I can definitely say that studying the guitar grades can be useful. But are they the best way to learn to play the guitar? Can you become a great musician without them? Should you just avoid them all together? … Read more: Guitar Grades – Should I Take Them or Am I Better Avoiding Them?
- Gary went from dreaming for 27 years about being able to play bass, to playing his favourite songs and being able to jam with any musicianGary had loved the sound of the bass guitar for as long as he could remember. He dreamed that one day he would be able to play like the bassists in the songs on the radio and in the bands he watched live. But, as for so many people, life just seemed to get in… Read more: Gary went from dreaming for 27 years about being able to play bass, to playing his favourite songs and being able to jam with any musician
- Stop over thinking! You’ll be surprised by the results…How many times have you been working on a chord progression to the point where you can play it really well… only to completely forget how you did it the next minute? The guitar solo you love to play and most of the time you play it perfectly, but as soon as you think about… Read more: Stop over thinking! You’ll be surprised by the results…
- Capo: Why do you use one and is it cheating?Capo: Why do you use one and is it cheating? Capos are commonly used in acoustic styles of guitar playing, but can also be used on an electric guitar. A capo acts like the nut at the end of your fretboard and holds down the strings – so if you clamped a capo onto… Read more: Capo: Why do you use one and is it cheating?
- 5 reasons to add distortion to your guitar practice5 reasons to add distortion to your guitar practice It can seem that distortion just makes your guitar playing sound worse – especially for beginners. Start by adding a moderate amount of distortion to your guitar sound (roughly half on the dial) and then work from there. You don’t need to have it… Read more: 5 reasons to add distortion to your guitar practice
- Does your first guitar really need to be an acoustic guitar?Does your first guitar really need to be an acoustic guitar? Once you start looking for your first guitar you’ll notice that there’s lots of different types. There’s acoustic guitars, electric guitars and classical nylon string guitars. But then there’s also semi acoustic guitars, hollow body electric guitars and metal resonator guitars (I… Read more: Does your first guitar really need to be an acoustic guitar?
- Am I Too Old To Learn Guitar?Am I too old to learn guitar? For many people, learning the guitar is something that they just didn’t get around too. The interest was there but other things just kept getting in the way. Now that they have less on their plate, it seems like it could be a perfect time to… Read more: Am I Too Old To Learn Guitar?
- How To Read Guitar Tab and Why It’s Useful (and Why it’s Not!)How to read guitar tab and why it’s useful (and why it’s not!) Guitar tab (formally known as guitar tablature) is a common and extremely popular way for guitar music to be written. It’s different to traditional music notation (manuscript). Guitar tab tends to have much less information in it… Read more: How To Read Guitar Tab and Why It’s Useful (and Why it’s Not!)
- How to practice guitar with limited time – and still get betterHow to practice guitar with limited time – and still get better. Tips and techniques to make your guitar practices more effective and to create time even with a busy schedule With everything else we need to get done in a day – our jobs, classes, driving around doing 101 errands – it… Read more: How to practice guitar with limited time – and still get better
- When Will I Be Good Enough to Start A Band?When Will I Be Good Enough to Start A Band? The question that gets thrown around a lot when people are learning to play any instrument, especially a guitar: “when will I be good enough to start a band?“ So this is a tough one to answer as it depends on… Read more: When Will I Be Good Enough to Start A Band?
- Drop D Tuning for Guitar – What is it?When I first started playing guitar I was taught that you tuned the guitar a certain way – Standard Tuning. This is the most common tuning for guitars. But as I started to play more rock and heavier styles of music, Drop D tuning seemed to come up just as often as standard… Read more: Drop D Tuning for Guitar – What is it?
- Standard Tuning For A Guitar: What is it and How to Tune to itStandard Tuning For A Guitar: What is it and how to tune to it There are many ways of tuning a guitar, but Standard Tuning has become the most common. As an article on Fender’s tech talk ‘Standard Tuning: How EADGBE Came to Be‘ explains, most stringed instruments are tuned in 5th intervals… Read more: Standard Tuning For A Guitar: What is it and How to Tune to it
- What Guitar Pick Should I Use?What Guitar Pick Should I Use? So you’ve heard that you should be using a guitar pick (also known as a plectrum). So you walk into the guitar shop, ask the guy for a guitar pick and he directs you to a display box filled with different colours, shapes, sizes and thicknesses and… Read more: What Guitar Pick Should I Use?
- Should My First Guitar Be An Acoustic Or An Electric?Should My First Guitar Be An Acoustic Or An Electric? You may have some assumptions about what your first guitar should be. The most common assumption is that everybody starts learning on an acoustic guitar.The second is that electric guitars are noisy and when people are learning, an acoustic guitar is easier on everyone else in… Read more: Should My First Guitar Be An Acoustic Or An Electric?