Author Archive
Simplify to Play Guitar for 2011
Photo by cesar bojorquez
Every year I think about new resolutions. I get excited and want to do better in the next year, always looking for a new challenge.
I also evaluate what I have accomplished, experienced or how much I have grown.
I can look back with awesomeness.
In May my son Vince was born (he is really into guitars already), I spend more time practicing guitar and learned a lot of new stuff, Guitarhabits has grown rapidly and I really love the feedback I got from everybody, I started a new blog about simplicity, reduced and downsized a lot of my stuff, I have become an early riser (I wake up at 5 am) and enjoy teaching guitar as a profession at home.
This year I want to spent less time on the internet, simplify more and worry less about achieving goals.
I want to focus mainly on teaching and practicing guitar, Guitarhabits, meditation, running/walking and spending time with my family. Read the rest of this entry »
4 Brilliant Christmas Guitar Albums and What You Can Learn from Them
Christmas time is a great opportunity for guitar players to show (off) their skills.
Everybody wants to hear a good old fashioned christmas tune during the holiday season.
So to entertain your family and friends or impress your audience you got to prepare, study hard and learn from the best.
Besides that, you might want to listen to some decent christmas music yourself from time to time.
We all know the famous christmas songs we hear everyday on the radio, but guitar players need quality input to improve, to be fueled, to be inspired, to fall in love with and stay ambitious.
Listening to christmas guitar albums makes you understand how melodies and rhythm work in different ways.
It shows you how every guitar player has his own unique way of phrasing.
There is so much to learn from just by listening to records.
Listen to the records and hear how guitar players make use of scales, patterns, triads, arpeggios, intervals in the most creative ways.
Listen to the feel, dynamics, timing, tempo, techniques like hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, tapping, etc.
When you’ve listened close enough to the lead guitar and rhythm guitar parts start listening to the bass guitar, the piano, the drums and other instruments.
Concentrate your ears on one instrument at a time throughout the whole song. You will learn to start listening differently with your musical ear. Read the rest of this entry »
19 Inspiring Famous Guitar Player Quotes
Photo by Sean Rogers
Inspring quotes can unleash your inner motivation or teach you that one valuable life guitar lesson that you always wanted or needed to hear.
It somehow explains the essence of what the person is trying to bring across.
I love quotes from great blues, rock, jazz and classical guitar players or quotes from wise people like Lao Tzu or Buddha.
It makes me want to learn more and realize what is important and what not.
I hope these quotes contribute to your inner motivation and inspire you to study, practice, create, enjoy and achieve something amazing!
Listen and learn from the greatest:
1 – “I dedicated all the time I had to it. The 10 hour workout was just what I put in the magazine at the time, but for me it was every waking moment.” ~ Steve Vai
2 – “A lot of people think that if they learn to read music they are gonna lose their feel or their groove or something. It’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” ~ Frank Gambale Read the rest of this entry »
16 Legendary Fingerpicking Patterns
Fingerpicking style is used in many famous and legendary songs over the years.
The 16 examples in this post are a good source to learn the most common fingerpicking patterns you will ever come across.
The fingerpicking patterns can be applied to almost every folk, pop, country or rock song.
Try and figure out which pattern suits your favorite song.
Maybe you’ll already recognize some of these patterns from songs you heard before.
I personally think pattern #12 is a really nice one. It’s a Travis fingerpicking style arrangement named after Merle Travis. The Travis fingerpicking style is known for it’s steady bass pattern played with the thumb while the rest of the fingers fill out the rest of the pattern on the treble strings.
Right hand finger positioning
Now let’s take a look at the finger positioning assuming you are a right handed guitar player.
For my right hand position I use my thumb to pluck the low-E, A and D-string. The index finger is on the G-string, the middle finger on the B-string and the ring finger on the high E-string.
For each different chord, you play the corresponding bass note with your right hand thumb.
Whenever you play an A or Am chord with your left hand, you pluck the A-string ( A root note) with your right hand thumb.
For an E or Em chord pluck the E-string (E root note) with your right hand thumb.
D or Dm chord = D-string (D root note).
G chord = E-string (The G root note is played with your left hand on the low E-string).
C chord = A-string (The C root note is played with your left hand on the A-string) and so on.
Listen to the audio player below each tab to hear the pattern played twice in uptempo and slow tempo.
Practice each and every one of them thoroughly. It’s really good for you.
Enjoy!
PATTERN #1
A E
e:-------0-------|-------0-------|-------0-------|--------0-----------|
B:-----2---2-----|-----2---2-----|-----0---0-----|-----0----0---------|
G:---2-------2---|---2-------2---|---1-------1---|---1--------1-------|
D:---------------|---------------|---------------|--------------------|
A:-0-------------|-0-------------|---------------|--------------------|
E:---------------|---------------|-0-------------|-0------------------|
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
How to Really Increase Guitarist Productivity
Photo by bjortklingd
I get a lot of questions via Twitter about guitar goals and how to keep motivated, so I thought I’d write a post on guitarist productivity.
In the past I have done some things using discipline in order to accomplish a goal, but it never brought me what I wanted or what I expected. Later I realized why discipline didn’t work out for me.
Discipline is forcing yourself to do something you really don’t want to do in order to achieve a goal you think you do want. Doesn’t that sound strange to you? Well I’ve learned my lessons.
As a chinese proverb says: “The journey is the reward”. What it means is that you have to enjoy what you do all the way or make sure you enjoy it and forget about the destination or success what so ever.
Everything is about the journey, about what you are doing right now. Make sure you love what you do. It’s the number one rule to guitarist productivity and everything else in life.
Let’s get into it: Read the rest of this entry »
21 Must Have Online Musician Tools For Guitar Players
Today I present to you a list with 21 online musician tools so you don’t have to download or install anything. Just click the links and you’re up and running.
19 out of 21 tools are free to use. Most of them are virtual tools, a few of them are blogs but they can be a great tool as well.
The tools come quite in handy whenever you are practicing, playing, transcribing, improvising, songwriting or promoting.
I’m a major fan of cloud computing / Web 2.0 therefor I love online music rescources. It’s great to access these tools from any computer where I happen to be. It makes life a lot easier.
One of my personal favorites is tool #8 for improvising over blues backingtracks. They sound really cool.
In case you are going to copy/paste this list on a blog, a spreadsheet or mail it to someone, (which you are free to do) I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on my own blog so that’s why I put Guitarhabits on #21.
Enjoy the ride and good luck with it.
For your convenience:
1 – Myna Online Audio Editor
wwww.aviary.com/…
Use Myna to remix music tracks and audio clips. Apply sound effects and record your own voice or instruments. Read the rest of this entry »
