I like to start new students out using a flatpick. It’s the simplest way to strike a string because the pick comes to a point, giving us one spot to aim for each time. For many people, that’s all they will ever need. Developing control and specific picking techniques comes with time, but the basic […]
Three reasons why everyone should practice scales.
Not everyone wants to be a lead player. And it’s easy to think that the purpose of practicing things like scales is to learn to play lead guitar. There’s some truth to that, but the fact is that everyone can benefit from scale practice. Working the fingers individually builds control and will help make you […]
The Perpetual Beginner – what are color chords?
Chords come in a wide variety of flavors or “qualities”. Each one has a distinctive feel or “vibe”, an emotional association that goes with the sound. A simple example would be the contrast between bright, happy major chords and darker, sadder minor chords. When we learn chords on guitar, we usually start with the basic […]
Your capo: a tool, not a “cheater”!
Using a capo is for cheaters, right? Wrong! Yes, you can use a capo to make a song easier to play by allowing you to use more comfortable chords, or to raise or lower the vocal range of the melody. But what you’re actually doing is transposing: either actually changing the key of the song, […]
The Perpetual Beginner: more on how to play barre chords comfortably.
It’s an ongoing struggle for lots of people at the “long-term beginner” stage. I wrote a few weeks back about the pesky F chord, which is the first barre chord most students learn. The B minor usually comes next, because there are “cheater” version of both. But what about B major? The “A-shape” B chord […]
The Perpetual Beginner: chord inventory and the horse with no name.
How many chords do you think you know? How many chords are there, anyway? The average basic strummer uses a vocabulary of about eleven chords, and has probably learned quite a few more that they don’t often use or might even avoid. (Barre chords, anyone?) If we go through the familiar open position […]
