GUITARHABITS

Free Quality Guitar Lessons

34 Ways to Expand Your Guitar Skills Horizon

By 6 Comments

34 Ways to Expand Your Guitar Skills Horizon

You wake up, you take your guitar out of the stand and what do you play? Nine out of ten times you will play things you already know. Well, at least most guitar players do.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Repetition is good and important to train your muscle memory and build a repertoire of songs. You want to play what you love? Great! Another good reason to play things you already know. But repetition is entering the danger zone if you’re lacking inspiration to play something else.

Trying new things, other styles of music, working on different guitar chops, studying the unknown, will broaden your vision, spice up your guitar vocabulary, expand your musical horizon, and boost your creative output.

Oh yeah, and it’s just great fun.

So today, I’ve made a list to inspire you to learn some new cool things (Just click the links).

Enjoy!

– 1 Country licks

– 2 Rockabilly licks

– 3 Jazz chord progressions

– 4 Flamenco style

– 5 Fingerstyle Blues

– 6 Bottleneck / slide guitar

– 7 Sight reading

– 8 Learn the fingerboard

– 9 Combining major and minor blues scales and licks

-10 Blues Jazz licks
Continue Reading

How to Play Guitar With a Band or Group

By 6 Comments

How to play guitar with a band or groupPlaying guitar with a band or group requires certain skills, knowledge and attitude for things to work properly and make the overall sound coherent, rocking, and above all, a joy to listen to.

Depending on who and what instruments you are playing with, you’ve got a role to fill and really need to look for the right ingredients to make a difference and be part of something great.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important things you need to work and focus on when playing with others.

Be cohesive
Be a part and value to the band or group. Don’t try to stand out by outplaying everyone in the band. To make a band sound great you want to make it a whole, not four musicians and an ego-maniac.

Make sure your amp volume is appropriate and levels with the other instruments. Try to find the right balance.

Don’t fill every second with riffs, fills and solos, leave space for your fellow-musicians and let the music breath now and then. Be a team player.

Listen carefully to what others have to say. Talk about it. Learn from constructive critism. It can be tough to swallow, but these are the moments when you grow the most as a musician. Respect the opinion of your fellow musicians. Keep things cool. Be supportive and appreciative. Continue Reading

The 1 Minute Guitar Practice Session – Seriously!

By 3 Comments

Photo by Joshua Wells

The 1 minute guitar practice session - SeriouslyMost of us lead busy lives and struggle to find time to practice. That’s why I regularly aim for short guitar workouts. These simple and easy-to-do practice sessions will get you charged and back in the saddle before you know it.

There are times when you’re really into the habit of practicing. You keep it up for days, weeks or maybe even months and then suddenly something comes in between and you have to skip a few days.

Now you pick up where you left off and get back to your guitar habit, but then another thing comes along that needs to be taken care off and again you skip a few days.

Strike number three and all your best intentions are flushed down the toilet. Weeks go by without serious practice. It almost looks like you forgot how great it felt to improve on your guitar and surrendered to daily life of getting stuff done. So it seems.Continue Reading

The Fundamental Scales to Play over a Minor Key

By 4 Comments

The Fundamental scales to play over a minor keyAccording to scientific american it seems that over the last few decades popular music has changed it’s course from major to minor keys.

A minor key means the song is in a key or mode based on a minor scale. The song usually has a more darker, melancholic or sad mood.

To be able to improvise over a minor key you need a minor scale. There are a lot different types of minor scales. Today we focus on the most important scales played over a minor key.

The two most used and fundamental scales are the natural minor scale and the minor pentatonic scale.

CHORDS
We can use the chords built from the natural minor scale to play these scales over.
The chord formula for the natural minor scale:
minor – diminished – major – minor – minor – major – major
Often notated as Roman numerals: i – ii – III – iv – v – VI – VII

For example we’re going to play chords in the key of “A” minor.
Apply the notes of the A natural minor scale: A – B – C – D – E – F – G to the chord formula.
You get the following chords: Am – Bdim – C – Dm – Em – F – G

You can use these chords to build any progression. A popular and common chord progression is Am G F G (i – VII – VI – VII) Continue Reading