Use a Metronome To Improve Your Technique, Speed, Control & Accuracy

If your guitar playing is nowhere near the level that you wish it could be at there could be a variety of reasons. There are a number of skills and techniques that you must master in order to become a great musician. The focus of this article will be on technique. There is no substitute for technique when it comes to conveying your creative vision to others. You can be a brilliant musical, but if you do not have the ability to get your music out of your instrument, it will be next to impossible to express yourself musically in the way that you want to. Technique alone, like any other musical factor, is not the most significant piece of the musical puzzle, but without technique, it is impossible to play what you really want to hear.

Most musicians will agree that a metronome is a valuable tool for developing both control and accuracy on your instrument, but many guitarists do not know how to get the most out of using a metronome. I am repeatedly asked, “How do I use a metronome to develop more speed?” In this article I will address that question. Keep in mind that the approach to practicing your guitar that I describe here should be incorporated into your practice time and balanced out by all of the other musical elements. You want to make certain that all of the musical abilities that are pertinent to you to achieving your goals as a musician are constantly being improved upon.

One of the most asked questions concerning the use of a metronome is “what tempo should I begin with?” The answer to that question all depends on your present level of skill as a guitarist, the particular exercises and technique you are working on, and whether or not you are playing 8th note triplets or straight 8th notes. If your are playing 8th note triplets you will have to set your metronome to a slower speed then if you were playing straight 8th notes, because if you play 8th note triplets you have to play three notes for every click of the metronome. Where as if you were playing straight 8th notes you would only play two notes for every click of the metronome.

Before you begin to incorporate a metronome into your practice you should make a detailed list of the techniques and problem areas of your guitar playing that you wish to improve upon, and write down next to them the goals that you want to achieve concerning speed. Next you will want to evaluate how fast you can play a specific technique comfortably at. Write down the results, all of these things will help you to evaluate your present skills and show you were you must improve before you can play at the level that you wish to play at. Once you understand your present playing abilities and the exact technical challenges that you are facing, overcoming them will be that much easier. A

Perfect Your Guitar Sweep Picking Technique

If you are reading this piece then I am assuming that you have been practicing some sweep picking techniques and are struggling to improve it. If this is the case then read on, as I explain how you can avoid the four most common technical errors that many guitar players come across when they attempt to improve on their sweep picking technique.

Normally if you a problem in anyone of the four areas as described below you will have problems in all four areas to some degree. The good news is that as you improve in one area the others tend improve. Read on and you will understand why this is.

Separating the notes:

Many guitar players have troubles separating the individual notes of an arpeggio because they do not release their fingers from the notes that have been previously played, the results are that all of the notes ring together. Though keeping your fingers on the fret board goes along with the theory of minimum motion of the fingers, it goes against the rules of clean sweep picking: all notes have to sound individually and clearly! It is very tempting to want to reduce the motion of your fretting hand as much as possible, but you also have to make certain that the notes sound cleanly.

The secret is to find a balance between raising your fingers off of the fretted note after you have picked it, while being careful not to let your fingers come up so far from the strings of your guitar that it makes it hard to bring them back down to play the next series of notes. You need to learn how to lift your fingers slightly off of the strings after it has been struck to stop it from sounding, You will also have to learn how to mute that string with your picking hand.

Even though releasing your fingers from the fretted notes that you have just played is not an application of “minimum of motion”, it is required that you do this in order to play the technique clearly and cleanly. Although this makes perfectly good sense when reading about it, a lot of guitar players have a hard time with finding the correct relationship between the economy of motion and playing notes cleanly, not only when it comes to sweep picking, but all other techniques as well.

Back to Basics - Learn How To Play Guitar

So you want to learn how to play guitar do you? Well congratulations, because in my ever so humble opinion, learning to play the guitar is among the most rewarding things that you can learn. The goal of this article is not to turn you into some kind of overnight rock star, but rather to give you a bit of an introduction to the guitar, give you a couple chords to work on to get started.
But first… a question I come across all too frequently:

Can I Learn How To Play Guitar?

I had the good fortune of learning guitar when I was a teenager; however I’ve found that there are many people out there who are much further along in life, and are now wondering if it is even possible for them to learn at their age.
I’d like to answer that with a resounding YES!

YES! It is possible for you to learn to play guitar, regardless of your age. The oldest student of mine that I’ve heard from was 93… just starting to learn how to play guitar, and LOVING IT! The biggest

Physiology of Guitar: 5 Practical Ways to Improve Your Guitar Playing

Like many guitar players, I’m self taught. While I believe that we autodidacts develop a degree of independence and creativity in our approach that eludes some schooled players, the cost of this is that we also tend to develop an impressive array of bad habits.

While some “bad” habits and unconventional techniques can be the very things that endow us with a unique style, others are the barriers that prevent us from realising our musical ideals.

With this in mind, I’d like to share with you five practical, personally tried and tested ideas to revamp your playing by re-examining the rudiments of how you connect and interact with your instrument.

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Mea Culpa

I’m not a great guitarist, and probably never will be. I’m neither a technical wizard, great through sheer application and effort of will, nor an inimitable one-off, endowed with an unfathomably idiosyncratic style. Then again, most of the players I admire aren’t the image of perfection either and, come to that, even many of the “great” players have noticeable flaws: Jimmy Page is famously sloppy, Kirk Hammet has a notoriously iffy vibrato technique…

Point is, being a good guitar player means being exciting, interesting, passionate and musical. It doesn’t mean being perfect and, besides, if there really was a one-size-fits-all foolproof recipe for perfection, we’d all be virtuosos.

But don’t quit your practice regimen just yet! Just because you don’t have to be perfect doesn’t mean you don’t need to work on finding and expressing your style, and even if you’re not interested in the traditionally
“technical” disciplines of jazz, classical and shred metal (a weirder trio is hard to imagine!), it doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from borrowing some of their ideas.

So, here we go. No crazy scales, no pythagorean gobbledegook. Guaranteed.

10 Ultimate Guitar Tips

Improving on the guitar, for many guitarists, is the reason for playing the instrument in the first place. The warm, self-satisfied glow inside when you finally see the benefit of all those hours of practicing can't be beaten – but all too often those hours are meanderings in the dark: aimless and not actually all that enjoyable.
But it really shouldn't be that way. So this lesson (complete with tab) is designed to put some life back into your learning.

To bring you this lesson, MusicRadar's sister magazine Guitarist asked some of the top guitar tutors in the business for their wit, wisdom and home truths about what it takes to really improve your playing. You'll find 10 of those tips below.

1. Golden Rule: practice with a metronome

Great players have great timing, so practice with a metronome – every single time you practice. (Mike Goodman)

2. Know the intervals

Most guitarists don't know the notes on the fingerboard – which means there's no point venturing into the world of musical theory as you won't be able to apply it. Here's an exercise that'll get you knowing the intervals between notes in no time… The exercise cycles through the four triads in one area of the neck: witness the intervals as they change and then use the roots, 3rds and 5ths as a reference from which to work out where the other intervals are. (Mike Goodman)