7 Tips to Help You Learn Tons of Songs In a Time Crunch

You have this great opportunity to play a show and earn some good money, or to get into this high-level band, but you need to learn their whole set of songs you never heard before, for a show they have in 4 days. Things like this happen regularly in this fickle industry. Here’s 7 tips that will help you prepare for those kind of situations.

Set Yourself A Deadline You Can’t Escape.

Might seem a silly topic considering that the show you have to play 4 days after being hired is already a serious deadline in and of itself. Yet, you can battle and target that deadline, setting mini deadlines to accomplish as stepping stones towards the main deadline: the show. Tell the band who hired you to have a rehearsal tomorrow or within 2 days the latest of you getting the songs. It is amazing how much you can accomplish when you set yourself constant deadlines. You will find yourself working much harder and being much more focused when you set a short deadline you cannot escape. Tell them that you want to rehearse with them tomorrow and that you will most of the songs down by tomorrow’s rehearsal. Stay up all night if you have too: play the songs non-stop till you cannot forget them anymore. Push your limits and push your memory.

Don’t Waste Time “Getting Organized”.  

You don’t really have time to waste and you surely don’t have time to start making practice schedules or create an organizational fuss. The task is simple: you have 14-15 songs to learn and a show in 4 days. Speak up: the band might already have tabs or chord charts written out. Ask them to save time and hassle figuring it all your by yourself.

If they don’t have music or chords written out: get to work. You don’t get fussy about which song to start with: you pick the first one on the CD they gave you and you figure out the chords asap. When you’re done, you immediately get to the next song and figure the chords out to that one. Keep going till you have all the chord charts prepared to all songs. If they play cover tunes, find the tabs online to save yourself time transcribing. Don’t start learning and practicing songs till you have all the chords and guitar parts to all the songs on paper. While you’re in the transcribing flow: you will find yourself finish this part of the job much more quickly if you don’t get distracted into playing, then transcribing again, then playing again, then back to transcribing, etc.  Don’t interrupt what you are doing and don’t multi task. Remember: you don’t have time to waste. Finish one part of the job completely before you move on to the next step. All successful people apply this important rule. When you are done compiling all the charts: go back to the first song and memorize it all. Only move on to the next song when you have the song you were practicing close to completely memorized.

Get Amazing Slowdowner

This is amazing practice software. It allows you to change the tempo and the pitch of songs independently from one another. If the song is a bit too fast to your technical abilities, slowing the song down will make it easier to play. You can then gradually speed up the song over numerous repetitions as you keep getting better. The main time saving feature to address here is the “start point” feature. You can set a starting point so the song always starts from the same spot in the song upon simply hitting your space bar. Even better: you can also set the ending point of the fragment you want to repeat over and over again. Now the fragment loops and you don’t even have to hit your space bar anymore to start the music. When the musical passage hits the end marker, the music automatically jumps back to the starting point and keeps repeating between your 2 cue points. This is unlike for example iTunes or any music playback software, where you have to physically grab your mouse to pull the song position slider back, then wait till that section of the song comes up where you need practice; and then do all that over and over again. This saves a lot of time with Amazing Slowdowner.

Don’t procrastinate.

Listen to the songs whenever you have a minute.

Listen to them in your car. If the songs were emailed to you as mp3’s, burn them on a CD or put them on your iPod so you can listen to them everywhere all the time. While listening: try to memorize the song forms and structures. Is there an intro? How long are the verses? Can you tell the chord progression by ear? Having the structures of the songs memorized, is already half the battle. The good news is: you don’t need your guitar for that and you can practice this anywhere. You just need to keep listening to the songs over and over again.

Every single second you have should be dedicated on getting those songs down. Those songs, for those 4 days, are your whole world. Nothing else exists.

Repeat… Repeat… Repeat!

Repetition is the mother of all skills. The only way you are going to get those songs down in no time at all: is trough focused, continuous repetition. Don’t take breaks: keep repeating till the material is hammered in. Here’s a good tip: the moment you feel you are starting to get the song memorized that you have been working on, move on to the next one. During that time, the previous song will have time to sink in, and some of it will get forgotten again. Then after 15-20 minutes, move back to playing the one you felt you almost had down 20 minutes ago. That way you feed the information to your brain, let your brain assimilate the info and forget some of it, then feed it to your brain again, and so on. It is like having multiple rehearsals a day of the same song. This is the very best way to get things memorized.

Keep Positive Thoughts.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed and to think that you cannot do it. Change your thinking: you can do whatever you set your mind to. There is no greater waste of time and energy than thinking negatively. As a matter of fact: you don’t even have time to think. Keep working, keep learning, drink lots of water and eat a small meal every 3-4 hours to keep your energy up. This is totally doable. As a matter of fact: you could learn 15 songs in a matter of only hours of time. In preparation for these kinds of situations, you should practice your ear relentlessly. The better your ear: the lesser time it takes to learn songs. Thinking positively also opens up your mind to find solutions. If for example you somehow don’t manage to get all the songs down by your rehearsal deadline: bring your chord charts in case you forget parts of certain songs so you can read them. If you will not be able to get all the guitar solos down note for note: simplify them, or ask if it would be ok to improvise your own solos, which would save you a lot of study time if there are a lot of guitar solos. Panicking leads to tunnel vision, which results in a narrow perspective, which makes it harder to see solutions and possibilities. Be positive!

Play Behind The Beat.

When you have that rehearsal, it helps to play behind the beat. Not only does this make you sound more relaxed, it also gives you that fraction of a millisecond extra time to hear what the next chord is that the band is playing. Especially if you have a really good ear, playing a bit behind the beat buys you that fraction of extra time to hear which chord the band is moving to next. This too saves you a great deal of memorization time. You still want to have the song memorized, but it takes away, pressure, worries and stress, to know that this trick will aid your memory on the spot while performing the songs with the band.

Guitar Fretting Hand Position: The Dos and the Don'ts

You will find a lot of resources on correct guitar hand positions when you scour the Internet. Unfortunately, there is lot of misinformation. Here is a list of guitar hand position dos and don’ts that will help your technique, improve your guitar playing and protect your physical wellbeing!

Relax!

Keep your fretting hand forearm and wrist in a straight line. Don’t bend your wrist! Having a bend in your fretting hand wrist puts strain on the tendons in you wrist, which can cause tendinitis when you practice a lot. You want to make sure you’re not putting any unnecessary strain on the muscles and tendons in your forearm. Tensing up while playing guitar will make you sound tiny, nasally, and cramped up. In addition: your fretting hand and arm will get tired faster. Loosen up! Holding a guitar is not a struggle.

Stretch!

All top players stretch when they are engaging in physically demanding practice activities, so why wouldn’t you? When you’re not used to playing bar chords and you feel like your arm is about to fall off, stretch! When you’re doing intense, repetitive technical exercises to improve speed, dexterity and strength: stretch! Not a bad idea to stretch a bit before you practice intensely. You should surely stretch during those practices. Again: when you feel your hand and fore arm getting really tired, stretch before you start feeling discomfort, then continue practicing or practice something else to give your hand some further rest. How do you stretch? Keep your (fretting hand) arm straight (don’t bend at the elbow) in front of you, your hand open, the inside of your hand facing forward: like you’re signaling “STOP!” Then with your picking hand: gently pull your fingertips of your fretting hand towards you. Keep that pull for about 30-40 seconds. Other really good stretch: keep the arm of your fretting hand straight without bending at the elbow. Rotate your forearm so the inside of your fretting hand is facing up. Close your fingers into a fist, without pressing hard: just simply close your fingers. Then reach over with your picking hand, grab your fretting hand fist and gently and carefully pull your fist towards you, without bending at the elbow. These 2 stretches work both sides of your arm. Do them often when you’re practicing physically demanding exercises.

Always Play With a Strap

Do you want to use your hands to play guitar with them, or do you want to use them to hold the guitar? That questions pretty much sums it up: when you play without a strap, part of your hand energy and attention is directed towards having to hold your guitar. With a strap, your guitar holds itself and you can use your hands to actually play guitar. Not only that: you also don’t have to worry about your beautiful guitar dropping on the ground.

Rest Your Thumb On The Back of The Guitar Neck.

As opposed to: pressing (really hard) against the back of the guitar neck. Try it out: play chords without your fretting hand thumb touching the back of the guitar neck! It’s usually pretty surprising for most people to found out that you don’t need your thumb to play guitar. This being the case: go figure how much energy you waste then if you press hard on the back of the neck with your thumb. You don’t even need your thumb to get the job done. Just rest your thumb against the neck. You’re only wasting your power and energy when you push against the back of the guitar neck.

Keep Your Fretting Hand Rounded!

Your fretting hand should always look as though you are holding a bubble or a baseball. The only exception to this might be if you’re playing a bar chord. Your fingers should be curved (exactly as your hand naturally is in a relaxed state) with your fingertips perpendicular on top of the guitar strings. There should be no “angles” or strain on any joints in your hand and fingers.

Keep your thumb straight

Very often guitar players bend their thumb of their fretting hand behind the guitar neck. Don’t do it: keep your thumb straight. This is the fix for guitar students who complain that their forearm starts hurting after a while of fingering chords. More often than not, the solution is in straightening out the thumb. Your guitar is basically your “tool” that you pick up to create music with. You would never pick anything up with your thumb bent, because your hand is not designed to function that way. So trying to play guitar with your thumb bent goes against the grain of how your hand is designed to function. The bent thumb results in added tension in the forearm muscles, which leads to the forearm pain guitarists feel after a while.

Conclusion:

The position of your fretting hand is important for various reasons: better sound, better technique, less strain, better performance, more control, more endurance, physical & medical precaution preserving your hand, arm and wrist, and having more fun playing more at ease. And that is exactly what I would like you to do now. Enough reading: go have some fun, jamming guitar while improving your hand position.

It's the teacher's fault.

Imagine following,

You decided to take guitar lessons, and you’re exploding from excitement in anticipation of your first lesson with your new teacher. You’re also a bit nervous, cause you know you will be self-conscious about making mistakes, and you’re a bit worried about how your new teacher is going to react if you make a mistake or if you don’t immediately understand something.

So your first lesson starts, and all goes well.

Then your teacher presents new material, some music theory involved, and you blank out.

You focus really hard and really do your best to try to understand what he is talking about. He explains it again, using the same explanation; you feel yourself getting more confused.

The teacher can tell you’re not getting it. No problem: he does his whole explanation one more time. At this point you are now asking yourself “why am I not getting this”, you feel the vibe in the room change. Is the teacher suddenly less patient, or are you maybe imagining that he is talking a bit more agitated. Meanwhile, valuable time (that you paid for) is flying by.

You start to apologize for not understanding the material. You start to explain him reasons why you are not getting this: “I am a left brained type of person”…”I have never been good with theory”… “I am not a mathematical thinker”… “I am more intuitive”… etc…

The teacher gives it one more try: more of your lesson times gets used up, while the teacher gives you exactly the same explanation he just did 4-5 times in a row.

Now you feel really bad when you realize you still aren’t really getting it.

I got news for you:

You don’t have any reason at all to feel bad, because the reason why you are not getting this doesn’t have anything to do with you.

It is the teacher who is at fault!!!

Never blame yourself for not understanding something: it is always the teacher who is to blame.

There is this saying that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

Think about that now: if you are not understanding something that the teacher explains, it is his job and responsibility to explain the material differently the next time around.

What works with one person, does not necessarily resonate with another.

And that… is what makes the difference between a $35/hour instructor, and a $50+ instructor.

A top instructor can very easily and efficiently explain anything from many different angles, which gives his student the advantage that no matter how complicated the lesson material; it always sinks in no time.

If you can’t define or explain something in very simple words from many different angles and viewpoints, then that means that you also don’t truly fully understand the material you are talking about.

Conclusion:

The guitar teacher, who needs a lot of time to get you to understand the information he is trying to convey, does not really master the material himself and is therefore wasting your time, talent and money. Quality is more than worth paying for: it is a money saver in the long term. 

10 Lessons From the Gym for Guitarists.

In many ways, playing guitar and going to guitar lessons is like going to the gym. Here are 10 things that you do in a gym, that are essential to becoming a master guitar player as well.

1. Private Trainer
   There is no better way to improve really well in whatever goal you take on, than through weekly meetings with a trained professional. Having a private guitar teacher is very similar to having a private fitness trainer. Both a guitar instructor and fitness trainer are driven and work hard to push their clients to reach their maximum potential and results. Great guitar teachers, much like fitness trainers, are fast-paced and consistently challenge you to push yourself. They got to their levels of mastery in their fields through many years of experimenting, practicing, studying and training, and they share that experience with their students and clients to have them achieve the same or better results much more efficiently.


2. Technique
   A fitness trainer will teach you how to work out a certain way for maximum benefits during a training session. Every work out drill requires certain techniques you have to keep in mind to work the correct muscle groups and to not physically injure yourself. This situation is similar to a guitar teacher pushing you to do certain things on your guitar so that you can get the best sound possible out of your instrument and the best results in your guitar playing, without physical strain or discomfort. If you don’t do crunches correctly, you won’t get abs of steel. The same is with guitar – if you don’t place your hand the right way on the fret board for a bar chord, your playing will sound muffled when you could produce a better sound by using the correct technique.


3. Posture
   A physical trainer isn’t afraid to remind athletes that they must constantly focus on their posture so they don’t injure themselves. A guitar coach will do the same for his students. Playing guitar with bad posture can lead to tendinitis, carpal tunnel and other hand/joint problems. Your guitar teacher, just like a physical trainer, will not hesitate to remind you of this. A physical trainer will remind athletes why good posture is important: because their bodies are their instruments. The same is true for guitarists: your guitar is not your instrument, YOU are! Your guitar is just a tool, an extension of you the musician. Having a guitar teacher who is consistently pushing you to have good posture is a teacher who has your best interest at heart.


4. Working Out
   When maintaining physical fitness, people work out to keep their bodies in proper condition and to improve or enhance their physical being. Working out is just like practicing guitar in between lessons. If an athlete doesn’t work out in between competitions or games, his body will quickly become out of shape and he will not be able to perform as well as he could his next game or competition. If a guitarist does not practice in between lessons or performances, he will not be able to play his best. By working out in between games and practicing in between lessons and performances, both athletes and musicians will be able to keep up their game.


5. Pacing Yourself
   When running a marathon, it makes sense to pace yourself and not start the race out at your top speed. This is the same when playing music. Trying to learn too many new songs, techniques and theories at once will keep you from remembering everything and you won’t be able to build adequate skills and memorization in each area. Learning how to pace yourself is vital for any athlete and musician. By pacing yourself with guitar, you will be able to soak in more information bit by bit, rather than trying to learn huge chunks at one time and only remembering tiny pieces. 


6. Breathing
   If an athlete doesn’t breathe while working out or during a game, his muscles will get tired much sooner and give up on him because they don’t get the required amounts of oxygen quickly enough. Although a musician is not as dependent upon proper breathing for purely physical benefit while practicing or performing, his breathing greatly affects the way that he plays. Breathing with the music is important in order to perform well and to calm your nerves. Breathing connects you better to the present moment, and sharpens your awareness. When you breathe with your phrases, you will intuitively play better rhythmically and be more in sync with the music. If you stop breathing, you cramp up, and this is going to affect your time feel, your presence, your sound, and your perception of what comes out as you’re playing.


7. Positive Belief Systems
   Beyond physical training and playing music, your attitude always has a major impact on everything you do in life. If you constantly tell yourself that you are doing terribly, that you can’t run 10 miles, or you can’t possibly play that sixteenth note run at 160BPM, you won’t be able to and it is going to take you much longer to get there. Having a positive belief system is similar to the rules of the placebo effect: if you are thinking negatively, you will get negative results, but if you constantly tell yourself you’re doing great and are completely capable of achieving a goal, you will be happy with the changes you will see in your playing and your progress.


8. Patience
   Muscles do not build over night, nor do incredible guitarists. Having patience is important to become the best musician you can be. Being a great athlete or musician takes a lot of dedication, practice and patience. In order to be the best guitarist you can be, focus on living in the now. Stop worrying about how you should be much better and start focusing on the effort you put forth in learning to become a better guitarist. In doing this, you will be able to achieve musical growth without pressure or wasted energy. Remember: the joy is in the moment and the journey, knowing that you are progressing as you are training and practicing, even if it does not seem noticeable. Everything you focus on always improves. Everything you nurture always grows.


9. Persistence
   Being persistent while practicing guitar is a similar to an athlete maintaining endurance during a marathon. They might not want to keep running or training, but they do. This, in turn, allows them to perform better. You might not want to practice those hammer-ons anymore or your fingers might hurt from trying to get that bar chord perfect. However: working on the things that are tough or “not as much fun”, builds character and gets you results. The added charisma and stage presence that results from the confidence you get knowing that you are not a giver-upper, is a nicely added benefit.

Practice Routines
It is a given that football players who play the Super Bowl, have come a very long way of training and games, to get to that magical moment. They spent years practicing tactical game situations and techniques. Similarly, a guitarist wouldn’t want to play a gig without having practiced his set list or new songs. You can’t get the results you want to get, without regularly performed practice routines. If you have an important gig coming up, invite your friends and family to your home and give them a practice concert. This will help you play better and work out any kinks in your performance.

10 Things You Can Practice Without a Guitar in Your Hands

Although you might not always have a guitar to practice on the spot, there are many things you can still practice when you don’t have a guitar with you. As a matter of fact: really great musicians have gotten to the level they are at, because they are so passionate about music that they constantly found ways to practice things wherever they had some time to kill and wherever they were at, with our without their guitar. These exercises are also great in the unfortunate event if you were for example to injure an arm or hand. When that happens, a music student usually gets incredibly discouraged. No need to anymore, you can still progress strongly even if you can’t play guitar for a while: here are some of the many things you can practice without your guitar.

1. Memorize Key Signatures
   You don’t need an instrument around to memorize key signatures. Use flashcards! Make a stack of flashcards that covers every key/scale, and make a stack of cards for every key signature (a number of #’s or b’s). Keep both stacks separate. Shuffle one of the stacks of cards; then begin the drill. Card you just pulled says 3#’s; answer, that is A. Take next card, and so on. Figure out the answer if you are not sure. If you don’t know how to figure this out, have your teacher cover this with you, or read up on keys signatures. Do this till you run out of cards, then take the other stack, and do the same drill. Card you just pulled says “4b’s”, figure it out and when you are sure, blurt out the answer: “Ab scale”. You will be amazed how quickly you will have all key signatures memorized. If you master this, start doing the same drills again but for minor scales.

2. Sight Reading Notes & Rhythms
   Take any sheet music of any piece of music you haven’t seen before and practice sight-reading the notes or rhythmic placement of the notes. You could tap your foot or conduct the beat with your arm, and read or sing the names of the notes, or sing the rhythms. Practicing rhythms, you could say “ta” (1/4^th notes), “tata” 1/8^th notes), “tatata” (triplets), “tatatata” (4/16^ths), etc. This is great practice to get better at reading notes and rhythms on the spot

3. Listen to Music.

Given that music is a language, one of the necessary tasks to learn a language is listening to it. Listen analytically! What is the key? Is it a major or minor key? How many song sections? How long are they? What is the style? How does the song feel, the vibe? Why does it have that sound and vibe? Any guitar solos?

Listen to music you would not normally listen to. It will greatly expand your range of influences, your ear, your taste and your musicianship.

4. Get Familiar with the Fret Board
   Guess what? You actually don’t need your guitar to practice your fret board and to memorize where all the notes are located. You could practice this while being stuck in your car in traffic, or while waiting in line in the bank or the super market. Here’s how: pick any random note, for example F#, then from the bass string to the treble string, try to figure out all the fret locations for the F# notes by heart, staying within 12 frets. (2, 9, 4, 11, 7, 2). It is a very fun challenge, and it is motivating to see how much better you get at finding the note locations when you do this exercise regularly. Do this for all 12 notes. You will be amazed how strongly you’ll still improve doing those non-guitar drills that you can do anywhere, even I you cannot play as much guitar as you would like to.

5. Practice Rhythm
   Walking is healthy: it’s very good for you. Now: while you’re taking care of your body, you could train your mind as well in the meantime. And what better way to train your mind, than with rhythm exercises? Here’s how this works: use your footsteps, as beats in a metronome. Then count rhythms, on top of your steady walking pace. A quarter note, 1 note filling an entire beat, is the number “1”, 2 eighth notes, are counted as 1-2, a triplet is 1-2-3, sixteenth’s you count as 1234. So every footstep you set along your way, you basically on the spot improvise rhythms, counting for example: 1, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1, 1-2, etc, any combination of 1, 12, 123, and 1234. The main challenge here: keeping the numbers in your triplet count (123) even, and feeling the difference between even numbered groupings (12, 1234) and odd numbered groupings (123). Once you get the feel for this: add triplets over 2 beats. (You then count 1-2-3 over two footsteps, called “quarter note triplets”). Then quintuplets (groupings of 5 notes, 12345), which you could count over 1 beat, or over 2 beats, etc. This is one of THE most efficient and effective ways to get the feel for combinations of even and odd numbered groupings of notes. More importantly, this exercise is so effective because it touches at the core of what rhythm is all about: it’s physical… it’s about motion. “Rhythm” is something you feel. You do this exercise whenever you’re walking, and I can assure you that you will be amazed at your accelerated rhythmic improvement. This will do wonders to your understanding of rhythm and your guitar rhythm playing.

6. Bar Chord Exercises.

Name any random chord, for example Bbm. Then name the fret numbers where you have the 2 bar chord versions of that chord. The answer would be: “Am shape bar chord on the 2^nd fret, Em shape bar chord on the 6^th fret.” This is like practicing guitar without your guitar, and the great thing is: you can literally practice this anywhere, everywhere, whenever.

7. Train Your Ear
   No guitar is needed to train your ear. You can just pop in an ear training CD or use online ear training resources to strengthen your aural interval and chord recognition. If you’re out and about: get one of the many ear-training apps for your phone so you can practice anywhere. This is one of THE most important things to work on as a musician. The better your ear, the easier it is to play with other musician. Having a well-trained ear also makes it easier to learn new scales, new songs, guitar solos, and so on. Your ear basically guides your fingers to the right locations when you can tell by ear what the notes are in a melody or in a chord. You should practice this every day, without any exception. This drill should be your priority.

8. Learn New Scales
   Learning a new scale doesn’t always have to include a guitar. Pick a new scale you wanted to learn. Memorize its structure and intervals. Memorize its scale formula. Memorize what the notes are. Mentally picture and visualize the scale on the fret board whenever you have a quick minute to spare. Try to see the fingerings and notes for that scale in every position visually on the fret board in your imagination. When after a long day of work, school or errands, you finally get home and you finally have time to pick up your guitar, you will be amazed and surprised to find out how quickly you will master the scale.

9. Brush Up on Music Theory
   When you are out and about with no guitar around, you can use downtime for memorization of music theory. Some of the things you can practice (besides the key signatures mentioned above):

·         Recite chords to songs you’re trying to memorize.

·         Memorize the notes in all major, minor, diminished and augmented triads.

·         Memorize I IV V in all 12 keys

·         Memorize the half step locations in all 12 major scales. (for example in the key of C, that would be E-F & B-C, in the key of A that would be C#-D & G#-A, etc.)

·         Memorize the 12-bar blues progression.

·         Memorize the chords in “Rhythm Changes”

·         Memorize all modal interchange chords.

·         Etc.

10. Improve Your Picking Technique and Dexterity Through Visualization.

Acquiring and possessing great technical facility on the instrument, is more mental than it is physical. Victor Wooten in his book “The Music Lesson” touches upon this. Neuroscientists discovered that imagining yourself doing a certain activity, still fires off the neurons in the brains that would fire if you were actually engaging into that activity. In other words: if you just imagine your fingers flying over the fret board super quickly like you’re playing a Randy Rhoads or Yngwie Malmsteen solo, then the neurons in your brain that would fire off if you were physically playing that solo, still fire off even if you are not playing it. That is why, once you acquired great technique, you typically don’t loose your technical abilities as quickly as most people generally think you would. Even if you never have time to practice as much as you would like to, your technique will not deteriorate if you occasionally visualize and imagine yourself playing technically advanced guitar parts. Dexterity, control and coordination are all controlled from the brain in the first place, not from the muscles.

You could literally practice on a daily basis for months on end on a certain picking technique exercise without seeing noticeable improvement. If that is the case: put the exercise away for a couple of months and don’t practice on it at all for that long. Instead: spent 10 minutes a day imagining and visualizing yourself playing that exercise super fast, way more quickly than you are currently physically capable off. However: in addition to imagining how you’re physically playing that line at the speed you are aiming for, you also want to feel the joy of that mastery, feeling a sense of happiness, awe and wonder over your accomplishment. Visualization of a goal + emotion attached to it = a sense that your goal is already accomplished. Your imagination will fire off the neurons in your brain that would fire off if you were physically playing that line, but without interference of the physical strain and pressure you put onto yourself when you are physically trying to push your muscles to accelerated motion while gradually speeding up your metronome. That strain works aversely on the results you are trying to get.

All this does not mean that you could become an amazingly technically advanced player without practicing dexterity and speed. It does however mean that you will get greater success and results when you take advantage of the power of your mind and of the workings of the brain. Nothing can substitute for practicing, but you might as well practice efficiently and use every trick and technique you can think off to speed up your results and boost your efficiency.

The road to mastery on guitar is a road with no end and no destination. There is always more to learn. As a result, the more quickly you learn and the more efficiently you learn, the more you get to discover and experience on your musical journey in this lifetime. The above ideas and exercises will help you deepen and enrich that musical journey, as you will have more time to play guitar, practicing the things you don’t need your guitar for whenever you have a minute and wherever you are.

10 Things I Learned the Hard Way About Guitar

This is one of these silly lists of 10 random things that I learned while being a guitar student. I wanted to share this with you because I figured you might be interested in avoiding some of the pitfalls I fell into. This list might potentially save you time and talent, and make you enjoy guitar even more than you already do.

1. “Playing” Is Not The Same Like “Practicing”
   We’ve all heard the fine arts joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!” There will never come a point when you no longer need to practice. Talented musicians might be able to play fairly well without regular practice, but not practicing means settling for being a mediocre musician at best. And yes: this is regardless of how much talent one possesses. You will find that guitar is much more fun when you practice more regularly. You will only feel like you’re in a rut with guitar, when you have not learned anything new in a while. Moreover: “practicing” is not to be confused with “playing”. You don’t hone your skills playing; you hone your skills practicing. “Playing” is having fun doing things you can already do. You are then in your comfort zone and not growing as much. “Practicing” is when you spend time working on the things you suck at on guitar. That is where you really become much better.
   
   
2. Don’t Skip a Guitar Lesson
   Many guitarists will skip or cancel an upcoming guitar lesson intentionally, thinking they need more time to practice before they are ready for another lesson. Think about this: a 4-year degree program at a music college would turn out into a 20-year project if you would skip a week because you don’t have everything down yet from the previous week. I have news for you: “you will never master guitar”. You will also never become as good at guitar if you meet irregularly with you guitar teacher. After all, human nature dictates that skipping lesson weeks won’t buy you more time: it will only make you procrastinate more. When you skip a guitar lesson, you are wasting your time and talent. With more time in between lessons, you will forget part of the material covered, might have bad habits creeping in more easily, and could lose a chance to gain valuable insight on where you need further improvement. Every guitar instructor knows out of experience that the student who switches from meeting weekly to 2 –weekly, drops out within 2 max 3 months time after that. Months later that student typically starts up again: with huge regret over having dropped out.

3. Practice New Material at A Slow Pace.
   Einstein said half a century ago, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” Yet: it is amazing how often guitar students persistently keep retrying to play something they can’t play yet, at a pace that is way beyond what they are capable off. The fastest way to master anything is by doing it really slowly at first. This gives your brain and muscles the time to feel the motions, put all actions and decisions in the right order and process it all. This instills patience, self-discipline and control. Then you gradually speed up the action in small increments with a metronome, and keep pushing your dexterity, coordination, speed and control.

4. Make Extra Copies of Your Charts

You will see this happening over and over again: your band decides to add 10 cover tunes to the set of originals, and you will be the only one who is prepared and who comes with the chord charts written out. Not only that: they will all try to have a look at your charts. Your charts will pass through everybody’s hands at the rehearsal, and you will find that there are pages missing when you come back home after rehearsal. Or a new band you auditioned for, hires you and you have your first rehearsal. You’re nervous, and you forget your charts there after rehearsal, or spill a drink over them. It never hurts to have an extra copy of your charts in your guitar case, and one in your house. You can never accidentally forget to bring your charts to rehearsal when you always keep a copy in your guitar case, and anything can happen with those charts, you know you always have a copy at home still.

5. Don’t Travel on a Plane With a Hard Case

If you think air travel is easier with your guitar in a hard case, think again! Hard cases don’t fit in overhead compartments. If you travel with a hard case, you might be forced to check it in as regular luggage. When your guitar is checked in through baggage claim, there is a higher likelihood that it might get damaged, even if it is in a hard case. The solution: always take your guitar with you in a soft case, also called a gig bag. Those are smaller in size than hard cases. As a result: they fit into the overhead compartments. Walk through check in, airport gate and on the plane without saying a word about it, carrying your gig bag on your back or over your shoulder. Nobody is going to give you any fuzz about it.

6. Cut Down The Variables In How You Hold Your Guitar.

Always practice holding the guitar the way you would be holding it as if you were performing in front of 50,000 people already. You want to do so even if your goals on guitar are not that ambitious. More often than not, guitar students sit with their guitar resting on the leg that is on the side of their strumming hand. Meaning: right-handed guitarists rest the guitar on their right leg. In other words: the guitar is positioned on the outside of your body, instead of centered. However: if you have your guitar naturally hanging from your shoulder with a strap when you’re standing up, your guitar naturally wants to be in the center of your body. When then you take a seat, your guitar naturally always wants to go on the leg that is on the side of your fretting hand, the other leg (or in other words: centered with the guitar body between both legs). You will save yourself a lot of time when you get used to holding your guitar positioned between your legs when sitting, which is in the center of your body at any time. This cuts down the variables: your guitar will feel the same whether you’re sitting down or standing up. Time and time again guitar students have found out that they had to relearn or practice things when skills they had acquired practicing seated with their guitar on the outside leg, could no longer be performed as flawlessly standing up in a real life performance situation with other musicians.

7. Always Keep Spares
   Take spares of everything with you at all times because you never know what you might encounter or need in the moment. Keep an extra set or two of strings, extra guitar picks, maybe even an extra capo, cable, extra wrenches or string winder. It’s funny how that works: but you will find that you will only break a string, that one time you actually forgot to bring a spare set. It’s always good to be prepared.

8. Put Your Cable Behind Your Guitar Strap and Use Strap Locks.

One of the more embarrassing things you can go through as a guitarist in front of an audience: is suddenly going dead quiet in the middle of a guitar solo because you pulled your cable out of your guitar by accident. This would be the case when you step on your cable. That is not as embarrassing as having the hunch down to pick your cable up from the floor with a red face, followed by loud cracking noises as you nervously fumble to try to find the input jack on your guitar while your amp is still on. When that happens: I can assure you that you will never again forget to put your cable behind your strap. Doing so makes it impossible to pull the cable out of your guitar by accident. And trust me: you will most likely end up stepping on your cord at one point or another in every show you play. Not quite as embarrassing, but not really fun either, is when your guitar drops off of your shoulder because the strap somehow became unfastened. It’s annoying when your strap unhooks during a performance and you have to fumble to keep you guitar in your possession and not on the floor. There is simple solution: strap locks. They are cheap and make that your strap cannot unhook from the guitar without your intervention.

9. Being Prepared is Better Than Being Talented
   Bach supposedly said in his time: “It’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. Now if HE said it: there probably must be something about it worth considering. The same can be said about talent. Talent does not get you anywhere without development and training of that talent. You might be the most talented guitarist ever but if you’re not prepared, your talent will get you nowhere. Being prepared means: having charts ready before going to rehearsal, having the material mastered, having practiced enough, having your act together, having answers to questions that might arise, and being organized. People like it when you show up prepared. Being prepared by the way: also makes you appear smarter. I can’t begin to count the times people mistook my being prepared for being talented. You are and feel more confident when you are prepared. Everybody mistakes this for being more talented.

You Will Never Fool Your Teacher
Your teacher can always tell instantly how much you practiced in past week. Not only that: a great teacher will also be able to tell by your vibe, whether you’ve been slacking on practicing because you were exceptionally busy or because you tend to slack and procrastinate. He will also feel your nervousness, even you if you try to hide or control it. A pro teacher is trained at reading people and their energies. He more than likely understands and knows you much better than you think he does. 

10 Good Reasons Why You Want To Master Triads.

All too often music students think off triads (3 note chords) as being too basic. They want to rush to “the cool stuff”, those fancy 7^th chords. Well folks: “triads” ARE the cool stuff!

They are the basic foundation of our harmony. After all, the definition of a chord is: 3 different notes played simultaneously. Here’s 10 examples showing that “basic” in this case does not mean “boring”.

Triads are important chords to know about. You should be able to effortlessly find any inversion of any triad on any string-set. Here’s 10 reasons for you to want to practice them.

1)     Jump (Van Halen, the keyboard part)

2)     Fool in The Rain (Led Zeppelin)

3)     Reggae

4)     Back in Black (ACDC)

5)     The intro to Free Ride (Edgar Winter)

6)     “We Are Family”, “Get up (Like a sex machine)”, and other funky songs.

7)     Soul Man (Sam and Dave), and other soul music classics.

8)     The melody of The Star-Spangled Banner

9)     Fret board mastery

10)  Coming up with more melodic improvised lines.