How Relaxation Can Improve Your Guitar Playing – Part 2

By the time you read this you should have read and worked through my first blog about relaxation as a way to improve your playing. In short we are applying deep breathing techniques such as those found in yoga and meditations to become better guitarists. Here’s...

How Relaxation Can Improve Your Guitar Playing

Imagine you’re approaching the hardest passage in the piece you’ve been working on. How many times has it happened that you tense up a bit? Anticipate trying to get it right? Inadvertently hold your breath? Just have anxiety in general about getting it...

Keeping Your Guitar In Tune Keeps Your Ears In Tune

This will help you to learn perfect and relative pitch. If you’ve been studying guitar for a while you’ve probably hear the terms “perfect pitch” and “relative pitch”. Perfect pitch is the ability to hear a pitch (note) and identify...

Tremolo-Picking Lesson

Tremolo picking is characterized by a quick movement of the right hand, alternating up and down strokes. Basically you pick up and down as quickly as you can. It’s that fast picking you hear in Spanish guitar styles, country “chicken pickin,” twangy...

How To Figure Out Songs By Ear On Guitar

One of the most frequently asked questions my students have is how to figure out songs on their own. Here’s a few hints. 1) Follow the bass. If you figure out the bass, or lowest notes of the chords, you can build the chords from there. Look for notes that are...

Plan Your Picking To Play Better

Often my students ask me which type of picking should be used to conquer a riff or sequence most effectively. In the beginning, there are very clear answers to this question. As you grow as a player you will find there are no clear rules to the game, especially if a...

Become a Faster Guitar Player by Pushing Your Limits

We’ve all been there. Practicing a riff or chord change for weeks and still can’t play it at the speed our favorite artist plays it at. Practicing it slowly and deliberately, focusing on every note. This playing tip is about letting all that go. Sometimes...

Guitar Tip: Keep Your Fingers Near The Frets.

The fret is the point that the string vibrates against to produce a note. If there is extra string between the fret and the point where your finger pushes down the string it is likely that the string between your finger and the fret can cause a “buzzy” or...