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Archive for the ‘My Experiences’

Biggest Mistakes Made By Beginning Guitar Players

May 20, 2013 By: Guest Blogger Category: My Experiences, Playing Guitar No COMMENTS →

When learning to play the guitar, even if you use the best guitar lessons online, you still want to use all the resources your online guitar lessons offer.

There is so much to learn when it comes to guitars that go beyond finger placement and strumming. Learning to play an instrument is similar to learning mechanics, you have to fully understand a car before you can fix it. Taking advantage of the resources including blogs can make learning to play the guitar a little bit easier for everyone.

This blog is going to highlight an example of the different resources that can assist you in learning to play the guitar through the best online resources.This blog is going to highlight the top biggest mistakes beginning guitarists make.

They Don’t Practice With A Beat

A metronome is a device used to help musicians to keep track of the beats without having to count to yourself. These machines can be helpful when it comes to first learning guitar. The ticking sound may be annoying to some people, but the ticks are what your music should be following.

If you don’t want to use a metronome, you may also want to consider a drumbeat that can be programmed and played through machines and keyboards.

Not Using Their Finger Properly

Finger placement is one of the biggest mistakes that beginners make when learning to play the guitar. Since guitar strings are so thin, it can be uncomfortable pushing the strings down to make chords. Since the strings are already making your fingers sore, it could be a player’s instinct to use the lower parts of their fingers rather than the tips.

It is important to use the tips of your fingers when playing the guitar to get the correct sound from the strings. Though it may be painful on the fingers, your fingers will eventually get used to the pain and stop hurting, however, only if you use the tips of your fingers correctly to get past the initial hurt.

Practicing What You Can Play

This one may raise some eyebrows, but practicing what you can play is one of the biggest mistakes that beginners can make. If you sit down and only play the stuff you know how to play, you are never going to get past what you already know. When you are learning to play the guitar, you need to challenge yourself to new things in order to get better.

Practice makes perfect. If you want to run through what you already know as a warm up, that is fine, but you need to try new stuff during your practice session to get any better.

When you are first learning to play the guitar, it can be difficult and challenging, but that is what makes the guitar so intriguing to play. Even if you are learning through the best online guitar lessons, you still want to take advantage of all the resources, especially those that offer advice.

This resource is attempting to help you avoid making the most common mistakes that beginning guitar players make, helping you on your journey to learn guitar.

Robert has been in the music industry for the past 10 years. His publications highlight the best online guitar lessons for prospective guitar players to learn the guitar at their own speed from the advice of professional guitar players.

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Two Unique Ways To Learn Guitar For Beginners

March 29, 2013 By: Guest Blogger Category: My Experiences 1 COMMENT →

If you’ve just purchased you’re first guitar, or maybe you’ve had one for a while and haven’t started learning yet, either way take a couple of minutes to read this article. I won’t be offering a bunch of free beginner guitar lessons, or tips. However I do want to talk to you about the two options you have to learn to play guitar as a beginner.

Whether you want to learn electric or acoustic guitar, rock or classical there are two specific paths you can take. One will have you playing songs in no time, the other takes a bit longer but is the path to mastery of the guitar.

Start learning to Master the guitar today!

Path 1: Learn Fast, and how to play songs ASAP

The first path that beginner guitar players can take provides gratification faster, but can also cause you to plateau with your learning a lot quicker. Some beginner guitar lessons focus on teaching you how to play basic chords, and then how to strum easy guitar songs. The focus is on teaching you how to play songs.

For those that want to learn to play guitar so they can play songs at parties and around the campfire, this method is most likely for you.

Common points that are covered in these types of beginner guitar lessons are

  • How to read guitar tabs
  • Learning guitar chords
  • Guitar chord charts
  • Strumming patterns and timing

These types of easy guitar lessons are solely focused around getting you playing something you’re familiar with as quickly as possible. This might be all you want from your guitar learning process, and that’s fine. However I think everyone should understand what they might be giving up on if they choose this path to beginner guitar lessons.

Ready to start learning yet?

Path 2: In depth beginner guitar lessons, teaching theory, music reading, and technique

The other alternative to beginner guitar lessons could also be considered the gate way into other styles of guitar playing. Most beginners will start with either acoustic or electric guitar lessons, and then refine their style as they advance, possibly into rock, jazz or classical.

More in depth beginner guitar lessons take longer to get to the song playing level, but they spend more time on teaching you theory and how to read music before getting into teaching you songs.

Learning beginner guitar music and theory provides you with a solid foundation that you can build on as you learn to play songs. The fact is learning to play an E, A, G and D chord isn’t that hard. Yes it takes a bit of time to feel comfortable with your fingers in those positions but overall it’s not that tough.

The tough part is when it comes to understanding why A chord is an A chord. Then if you want to learn how to play lead guitar (soloing) you’ must learn scales, and about the different keys (if this doesn’t make sense to you right now, don’t worry it all will eventually).

Again this stuff isn’t difficult to understand, but you should learn it in the correct order if you for see yourself wanting to jam with others, play in a band or write some of your own songs.

One thing I want to clarify, I’m not saying that you can’t learn scales, theory, or how to read music if you start with the first method we discussed. It’s totally possible to learn all of these things after learning basic guitar chords. It’s just easier to take beginner guitar lessons that are structured to teach you the right skills in a logical order.

What are the best alternatives for Beginner Guitar Lessons?

If you want to get up to speed quickly with your guitar then I recommend you check out Learn and Master Guitar. This course covers a lot of ground and will give you well over a year’s worth of material to cover as a beginner.

This course is the most in-depth and easiest to follow of any beginner guitar program I’ve come across, both in workbook and video formats. The videos are produced at a very high quality, and the level of play that this lesson pack can take you to is huge! I’d guess there is probably as much as 2 year’s worth of material in the Learn and Master Guitar series depending on how fast you decide to digest it all.

JP is a passionate blogger with great interest in music and various musical instruments, she recently started to get some guitar lessons online.

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What is a Talk box and how does it work

September 12, 2011 By: Chris Category: Equipment, My Experiences, Pedal Effects 5 COMMENTS →

Have you ever wondered how a Talk Box really works? I’ve wanted to get one of these things ever since I bought the legendary Frampton Comes Alive way back in 1978. If I still have your attention then read on!

A Talk Box is referred to as either an effects unit/device or pedal. This device first showed up way back in the 1930′s but who the heck was around then to remember it now. So let’s fast for ward to the mid 70′s when it became popular again by Peter Frampton.

First off the Talk Box receives or takes in an electronic signal (let’s say through a guitar chord to simplify things here). This signal comes from an electrical instrument coming directly from an amplifier. This signal is played through a fairly small internal speaker.

Peter Frampton's origonal Talk Box

Peter Frampton's original Talk Box

Now they have this airtight flexible plastic tube that captures the sound and shoots it towards the open end which you place into you mouth. On all pedals there is a toggle  switch that allows the musician to send the signal to the amplifier or to this tube. You can use your lips, tongue or mouth to help form the distinctive sound that you are looking for. At this point you can project this captured sound back out your mouth and into the microphone.

So there you have it!

Keep on Jammin’

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