Guitar Technique and Tips
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If you play guitar you already know there is a lot of technique involved in playing and learning the guitar. Today I will be giving to tips on practicing some fun tricks and techniques. First I am going to address playing chords on the guitar. You can easily be overwhelmed by the amount of chord shapes there are. I do recommend learning and memorizing all the open chord shapes that you can on the guitar. Once you have them memorized the next step in repetition. Practice going from one shape to the next as many times as you can handle. If you find for example going from a C chord to D chord make sure you practice these two chords back and forth over and over. Always use the same fingers every time you play a specific chord. C to D, C to D then D to C, D to C ect… There is no substitute for repetition. After you have memorized all the open chord shapes and have the ability to switch to one chord to the next in time you are now ready to move on to the next level of chords. Bar chords are consider by many very difficult. I agree they are hard to get them to sound good but just like the open chords when you first tried them they seem very hard. All the bar chord shapes come from the open chord shapes. For example the major bar chord with the root on the low E string come from the E major open chord shape. This is why getting your open chords shapes memorized first is important. The same process of repetition on the open chords applies to your bar chords. Practice going from one bar chord to the next taking note of the bar chords that you have difficulty with and make sure you practice your repetition with each set of chord that challenge you. Again always using the same fingering every time you play a particular chord.
Now on to some tips for playing single string notes and scales. When you’r learning your scales using the correct fingers in paramount. Always use the same fingering forwards and back wards on your scales. Keep your fingers square and your wrist dropped. With your picking hand make sure your using alternate picking. (Down up picking) Alternate pick will help improve your technique. After practicing your scales with each note being picked you can now try to hammer on and pull of the notes in your scales. Try picking the first note on each string followed by hammering on the next notes on that same string. On the way back down the scale you can try puling off each note after the first picked note on that string. To take your single string technique to the next level incorporate a metronome. You can track your progress with the metronome. Let say you are comfortable playing your major scale with the metronome at 70 beats per minute. Make a log and each week see if you can increase the tempo of your metronome. This gives you a real way to track your progress and see the improvement. Never set the metronome at a speed that is to fast as this will not help you improve. It’s almost better to set the metronome a bit slower and make sure each note you play is very cleaner. I hope some of these tips will help you improve your guitar skills!
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