A Real Guitar Hero Has This Skill - Do You?

by Donovan Lanier
So you went from mastering the video game to playing guitar for real, but don't think you are ready for a record deal just yet. This article will tell you what you absolutely must learn to earn the credentials of a real "Guitar Hero."

What you learn in this brief article will enable you to amp up your credibility as a musician, gain deeper respect from your band members, and win the hearts of your fans. Keep reading to discover how to go from "Guitar Novice" to "Guitar Hero".

There are countless guitars in homes across the nation, but there are comparatively few true guitarists. What is it that separates the hobby musician from a true guitar player? The biggest difference is that serious players have the ability to play by ear the songs they hear. They can discern notes and chords from things listened to on their CD's or on MP3 players, then mentally transcribe the song and play it themselves.

Think about all those aspiring musicians out there who are dependent on the guitar tablature printed in magazines or downloaded from the worldwide web. Imagine an aspiring "Guitar Hero" going in for an audition and being asked to play back a piece of previously recorded music he's just heard. His reply? "Sure, ok.... where's the tab?" He would be laughed right out of the building! Would you blame them? Don't get me wrong, guitar tab is a good place to start, but serious musicians understand that they must progress beyond that point.

The Bottom Line is: If you want to be seen as a serious guitarist, then you must commit to ear training.

Ear training is the cornerstone of a good musical career and can not be ignored if you want real credibility. Ear training shows a level of professionalism and dedication not seen in the hobby player. The good news is that with the right training, you can cultivate this skill and use it to your advantage. Learning to play by ear will take your music and technical abilities to new heights.

Do yourself a favor and commit to developing the ability to play music "by ear". Earn yourself the right to be called a "Guitar Hero". The resource links will point you in the right direction.

20 Essential Acoustic Guitar Tips for the Beginner

By: Ralph Serpe

Acoustic guitar lessons online are not difficult to come by. There are many sites offering free tips and lessons for the beginner, but it can be rather difficult sifting through pages of content to find direct answers to some of the most basic questions beginners have. I researched many of the frequently asked questions that beginners have and created this list of quick acoustic guitar lessons and tips to make life a bit easier for you. I do hope this helps.

1 - Learn how to play the acoustic guitar with both your fingers and your pick. Practice using both. This will make you a more versatile player.

2 - Learn how to use a capo. A capo is a clamp that you can apply to different frets of your guitar to change the pitch. You will definitely need to become familiar with this wonderful tool. If you do not already own one, head out to your local music store and buy one today.

3 - Make sure you choose the right guitar for your size. Guitars come in different sizes from classic to jumbo. It is very important that you find a guitar size that you are comfortable playing.

4 - Learn how to change your strings and change them often. If you do not know how to change your guitar strings yet, stop what you are doing and search for articles and videos online right now. This is very important.

5 - Wash your hands before you play and clean your strings after you play. Dirt and oils from your fingers and hands can wear down your strings.

6 - Build up those calluses. Many beginners complain of pain in their fingertips when first starting out. This is normal and will go away after you have been playing for a little while and start to form calluses. The more often you practice the faster you will build up calluses.

7 - Learn how to tune your guitar. Make sure your guitar is in tune before you start every practice session. Tuning your guitar is really quite easy. You can either purchase one of those small battery powered guitar tuners, or you can tune your guitar online. Just do a search at your favorite search engine using the key phrase "online guitar tuner" and you will find many helpful sites on this topic.

8 - Use YouTube to find free acoustic guitar lessons. Everyone is now familiar with the site YouTube. They have a huge variety of free lessons. Two providers of free lessons that I recommend you check out are: "Next Level Guitar" (goes by the user name "rockongoodpeople") and "Justinguitar.com" (goes by the username "JustinSandercoeSongs"). They offer some of the best free online acoustic guitar lessons. Highly recommended.

9 - Find a good guitar teacher. While it is possible to learn at your own pace at home using free lessons online, books and home study courses, nothing will replace a guitar teacher. A guitar teacher will help keep you from forming bad guitar playing habits and praise you when you are making progress.

10 - Stretch and warm up your hands and fingers before each playing session. This is important. Proper warm up and stretching exercises are essential in helping you avoid injury and improving your guitar playing. For more information on stretching and warm up exercises, do a search on Google using the key phrase: "guitar warm up". You will find plenty of tutorials on this subject.

11 - Learn music theory. I know music theory can be boring and difficult, but it is essential learning if you want to become a good guitar player.

12 - Learn about the parts of your guitar. Spend as much time as possible familiarizing yourself with all the various parts of your guitar and how it is constructed.

13 - Learn how to practice. This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many guitarists are not practicing correctly. There is definitely a right and a wrong way to practice. Make sure you understand how to make the best out of your practice sessions.

14 - Keep your finger nails on your fretting hand trimmed. Your fingernails on your fretting hand must be kept short. If not, they will most certainly make playing more difficult as they will prevent your fingers from pushing down the strings properly.

15 - Don't over do it. If you are experiencing any pain or discomfort during your playing or practice session, then stop and take a break.

16 - Try and learn something new. If you continually do the same thing, day after day, then your guitar playing will become stagnant and you will not progress.

17 - Join discussion forums online. Search for guitar discussion forums online and begin discussions with experienced and professional guitarists.

18 - Listen to a variety of different music. Not just your favorite styles either. You would be surprised at how much this can influence your guitar playing.

19 - Learn alternate ways to tune your guitar. Not every song is played in standard tuning.

20 - Go to live performances. This will give you a chance to get up close and personal with the musicians enabling you to see first hand how a professional plays.

The Essentials of Buying a Used Guitar

by: George Stanley

Buying a guitar can be a sizable investment. Like other items, the better the guitar the higher the price. A cheap guitar, whether used or new, will probably disappoint you at some point in time. If the cost of a new guitar is simply out of your price range, try visiting the local pawn shops to see what they have to offer.

One thing to think about, however, if you are going to visit a pawn shop, is how knowledgeable the owner is about guitars. Does the pawn shop owner play guitar, or do they just deal in guitars for some quick cash? If you can find a pawn shop operated by an honest guitar player, you are truly in luck!

One particular place to always inspect when considering a used guitar is the spot where the heel of the neck joins the body of the guitar. A lot of tension is placed on the guitar from the strings and the weakest point is where the neck and body connect. Over time, the glue becomes loose and the neck separates from the body at the heel.

Sometimes, just leaving a guitar in a hot car trunk can soften the glue enough for this damage to take place. The bad news is that this repair is not a simple, easy job for a luthier (guitar repairman) to correct. So be sure to look carefully at this area before buying a guitar as many pawn shops do not offer any sort of guarantee for your purchase.

Look the guitar over for other signs of repairs, too. Anywhere the instrument is glued should be looked at carefully. Some acoustic and semi-hollow body guitars split around the edges of the body.

Another part to be aware of because it can wear out is the tuning machine. The tuning machines are what keeps the guitar in tune. If they are not tight or they wiggle you might want to look at another guitar. However, the tuning machine can usually be replaced without any great skill, but check on the prices for the tuning machines before you buy. You might even be able to use this as a bargaining tool to get a better price.

Brand name can indicate a high quality used instrument, but there are many well known guitar manufacturers that also produce low end guitars. So, do a little research about models. For instance, you might track down a certain model number and with some online research, find out that a guitar you thought to be only about ten years old might really be about 35 years old. Or you may find out that the name brand guitar is priced high at the pawn shop, but actually the guitar is a low end model that you could buy new for the same price.

About The Author George loves to play guitar and is basically self taught. He has created two sites to help budding guitarist. The first deals with How to Read Guitar Notes athttp://www.HowtoReadGuitarNotes.com and the second shows How to Read Guitar Chords at http://www.howtoreadguitarchords.com . Visit the author's web site at: http://www.howtoreadguitarnotes.com

The Blues Solo And How To Approach It

by Ricky Sharples

You want to get off to a good start as a blues guitar player, you will need five notes. Well, five notes in any key. The five notes you will need is a scale called the minor pentatonic. If you are playing in the key of E the notes you are going to be using are E G A B D. The minor pentatonic scale and the changing relationships between those five notes will enable you to give your guitar playing the distinctive blues flavor. Get to know this scale by experimenting with simple tunes. You can make them up for yourself and play them up and down the guitar neck. As you spend some time playing your own tunes you can listen to CDs of the great blues guitarists. Get familiar with how you are using the five notes of the minor pentatonic scale and see how the guitarists of the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties used them. See how those old bues guitar players played inside the scale and how they ventured outside it to add some spice to the blues. Listen to how they used slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs as well as up and down picking. If you like the licks you are hearing in the work of the great blues guitarists, teach them to yourself. You need to be careful here. Your aim is not to duplicate note-for-note the licks of the greats, but you need to tap into the mood of their playing and see how it connects with your mood. Don't be afraid to leave some empty spaces. You don't have to fill your blues solos with notes. Next, you can start getting into mixing the major pentatonic scale with the minor pentatonic. You will find that blues guitar players of the past did that to great effect. So, still playing in the key of E, but now mixing the minor and major pentatonic, you get the notes E F# G G# A B C# D. An important element of blues music is the flattened fifth note. It can be overused, so just look at it as another tool to help you learn to speak blues. So with the flattened fifth added, your notes are E F# G G# A Bb B C# D. Now you have a bunch of notes that, played one after the other, will sound pretty ordinary. Go back and start experimenting with those notes. Make up some more tunes. Listen again to the big-time blues guitar players. Learn which notes are your bread and butter and which of these notes are to be used a little more sparingly. If you want a little help to start you off, try using licks in the major pentatonic scale over the I and V chords. You might notice your minor notes go well with your IV chord.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com

Guitar Plectrums & Guitar Strings

There is a wealth of guitar accessories available and many manufacturers make the same type of product. Many products come do the same thing but have large differences in price point so this can sometimes be confusing for many new guitarists. The old saying "You get what you pay for" does ring true in some circumstances but the volume and quality of guitar accessories available are ever becoming harder to distinguish. For example: If you were buying a product made of a solid wood, this would cost much more than a product made of plywood, why? Simply because the raw materials are more expensive. The guitar accessories I am going to talk about are guitar plectrums and guitar strings. Guitar Plectrums (Picks) are usually small triangular pieces of plastic that you use to strike the strings of your guitar with. Plectrums have many different thicknesses, materials, and sizes that all factor into the job they do, these variants create a different sound. More thinner and flexible plectrums generally are best suited to playing rhythm guitar, as they pass the strings quickly with less resistance. You’ll also hear a lot more of a flicking sound (a little like a scratch) as they pass over the string that is to some, desirable. This only really happens with the thinnest of plectrums. The thicker picks can be used more for lead guitar playing, as they produce a good amount of attack. They generally produce a more even sound and you get less flicking sound as they pass the strings. However, the sound you produce will differ, dependant on how hard your plectrum grip is. If you have a rigid grip a thinner plectrum may be beneficial as trying to play fast with a thick plectrum could be tricky. The plectrums I use are the Dava Control’s. The have a thinner central area that alters how hard the pick is dependant of how close to the tip you hold it. So I suppose you could call it a combination thickness plectrum. Guitar Plectrums only cost a few pence anyway so I would recommend getting a few different ones and try them out to see what you like best. Guitar Strings come in different gauges, the first question you will be asked when you go into a music shop to buy a replacement set of strings is "what gauge do you want?" String gauge affects the tone and the playability of your guitar. If you have a higher gauge string, there is greater tension. Heavy gauge strings generate a higher volume, however the greater the tension, the more finger pressure is needed to fret the strings properly. One major benefit of higher tension strings is that they vibrate in a shallower fashion, which allows closer adjustment to the fret board before getting string buzzes. A pretty standard Acoustic guitar string gauge is 12-54, and 9-42 on electric guitars. Altering your string gauge may require adjustment to your guitar in order to maintain the same action (Height between the string and fret board). On the flip side, lower string tension will cause the strings to lie lower which may result in buzzing, but if you already have a high action then you could solve that problem with a new set of strings. I actually prefer a medium gauge (a set of 10’s) string as it produces a more reliable string bend. The ones I use are the D’addario XL’s 10- 46 (regular light gauge) on my electric guitars and on my acoustic guitars I always use Brass wound D’addario EJ16 Light (Gauge 12-53). Brass strings produce a rich bright tonality that lasts well.

Created by JamesBB.com, the online guitar lessons resource site. We provide a wealth of knowledge and experience to all levels and ages of guitar player. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com

Beatles For Classical Guitar

One of the big events in fingerstyle guitar playing many years ago was the publication of a music book called "Beatles For Classical Guitar". This was the world's first attempt to mix the simplicity of the Beatles' tunes with the complexity of classical guitar technique. One of the first things that fingerpicking guitar players who were not trained in classical guitar playing noticed was that the fingerings to some of the tunes were much more difficult to execute than they had been used to. But no pain, no gain. The trickier arrangements indicated how much more musical richness had been found in these more complicated arrangements of familiar songs. Some guitar players thought that a book of classical guitar arrangements of the work of The Beatles was just a gimmick. They expected that a minimal amount of work went into these arrangements just to produce popular music for the "egghead market". In fact the songs are all substantial arrangements that many classical guitarists find extremely satisfying to play. People who loved the Beatles' music found that the songs had not been rendered unrecognizable in the process of arranging them for fingerpicking. The songs were arranged for guitar players who could read standard musical notation and they were not the kind of arrangements that could be played right through on sight the first time you saw them. The pieces asked you to pay some attention and make some effort. Once you get the feel of the way the songs have been interpreted you can let your familiarity with the songs guide you as you play. Some guitar players are going to feel cheated by the fact that there are not tabs but the pieces are a bit too complicated to be translated into tab effectively. Guitarists who are used to playing using sheet music will be gratified that the music is not made more complicated by the addition of a tab line. Here is the list of songs: Across The Universe Ask Me Why Come Together Cry Baby Cry Day Tripper For No One From Me To You Hello, Goodbye Here Comes The Sun I Don't Want To Spoil The Party I Will I'll Follow The Sun I'm A Loser I'm Happy Just To Dance With You I'm Only Sleeping I'm So Tired In My Life The Long And Winding Road Maxwell's Silver Hammer No Reply Nowhere Man P.S. I Love You Penny Lane Something Things We Said Today This Boy (Ringo's Theme) Two Of Us While My Guitar Gently Weeps Yesterday You're Going To Lose That Girl You might be surprised by the inclusion of some of the tunes in a collection of guitar solos. So go ahead and try them out.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com

Write Music That Appeals To Peoples Emotions

By: Richie Gilbert

Whether you choose to write music first or start with the lyrics, please remember one thing: The melody is always king! I want to explain why I believe that statement to be true. I know when it comes to songwriting all of the elements must fit together just so. There has to be a perfect marriage of lyric, melody, structure and feel. That is the hallmark of a great song. But I have heard too many songs that seem to focus primarily on the lyrics. The writer has poured out his or her soul to create a truly touching and beautiful story. Then those wonderful lyrics are paired with a mediocre, or even (gasp!) boring melody. The result? A mediocre, boring song! Those lyrics might work wonderfully on their own. But a monotonous unimaginative melody drags them down. Appeal To The Emotions As a songwriter, writing melody that appeals to the emotions of your listeners should be your top priority. Why? Because it's the melody that our brains latch onto first. A melody on it's own can make you cry, laugh and everything in between. It truly can be a direct communication to the soul. An interesting mood-evoking melody commands our attention. It makes us sit up and take notice. Only then do we start to pay attention to the storyline. To the lyrics. And if those lyrics are top-notch: Bingo! You've hit the jackpot. Write Lyrics As Good As Your Melody Now, this scenario can also be looked at from the opposite side: You write music that is truly inspiring. You then settle for the first lyrics that pop into your head. You don't bother rewriting those lyrics. You figure that since they fit the melody and tell the story they are good enough. I did this for years! And I was always secretly embarrassed by my lyrics. As songwriters, we must strive for that perfect balance. And it takes time and effort to master. (I'm still working on completing my apprenticeship!) Work On Your Weakest Skill If you only want to write music or you only want to write lyrics, that's okay. Collaborating with writers who excel at what you do not is a great way to write songs. If you love to write melody, find yourself a great lyricist. Or vice-versa. Most of us are better at one aspect of songwriting than we are at others. For me, it's always been writing melody that seems to come naturally. As a lead guitarist I usually opted for the slow, melodic, soulful lead over the fast shred. Through the years I've written quite a few instrumentals that I am proud of. Lyrics have always been a struggle for me. That's why I tend to spend a lot more time working on the words to my new songs than I do the melody. But I spend quite a bit of time on writing melody too! Because I understand how important a great melody is. Listen To Your Melodies Listen to the melodies you are writing. Are they as strong as your lyrics? Perhaps more importantly, can they stand on their own? A melody should be able to stand on it's own. It should be moving, interesting, somewhat predictable and a little surprising at the same time. I say somewhat predictable because we need familiarity. If every line goes off in a completely different direction you will lose most listeners. People must have something that they can grasp onto immediately. Especially in the chorus. So go and write music that moves you. If you do this, you can be sure that it will move others too. Happy melody writing!

Richie Gilbert has been passionate about writing songs for many years. He spends too much time in his home recording studio, and is active in pitching his songs to music publishers. To learn more about the craft and business of songwriting, please visit his website at http://www.inspired-songwriting-tips.com Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com