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Archive for the ‘Guitar practice’ Category

Learning guitar solos by ear  is hard work.  I remember many years ago, a friend of mine managed to secure a copy of Ritchie Blackmore's guitar solo to Smoke On the  Water slowed down to half space.  Suddenly we could hear how clean his runs were and how many notes he was actually playing.

I still love playing that solo note for note because it was the first real guitar solo that I ever  learned and the great thing was that it taught me so much about phrasing, light and shade and what notes not to play.  And I have to say that without being able to listen to the guitar solo at half pace I would never have attempted to study it the way I did.

Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and learning guitar solos is still a challenging and time consuming process – but technology has zoomed way past whatever reel to reel tape system my friend accessed to get that solo slowed down.

A great piece of software on the market is the recently updated Riffmaster Pro.

Riffmaster Pro saves hours of time and frustration by instantly enabling you to

• Slow down music to a pace you can play Without changing the pitch
• slow down Mp3, slow down Wav,wma,Mp4 , Ogg Vorbis and AFF files directly from your computer
• play any Riff or phrase over and over
• Zoom right into the wave allowing  You to find the exact phrase you want to work on(down to the note)
•  Save your own user settings
• Slow down an entire song so you can play along at your pace.
• Change the key of a music file for convenience
• Rip audio directly off a cd and save as mp3 or wav.
• Save a slowed down loop for training purposes
• Transcribe music of any song (tab or transcribe what you hear)

The benefits of Riffmaster Pro are simply awesome.

• You can master ANY Guitar solo faster than ever before
• You can master Any Guitar Riff faster ever before
• You can master the Chords To Any Song faster than ever before
• You can build and maintain Amazing speed of Any solo or riff
• You can master difficult phrasing like never before
• You can master any guitar solo, lick or riff Note for Note.
• You can learn the lyrics to Any song quickly
• You will discover the Magic of “Playing By Ear”
• You will learn any song Fast
• You can transcribe music of any song FAST

Riffmaster Pro is the Perfect Speed & Ear Training tool for all musicians  -from raw beginners to advanced.  I have bought this for myself – simply as a teaching tool to help me quickly teach students their favorite riffs, solos and tunes.

This is the shortcut to playing good quality guitar solos – slow down guitar solos learn them and increase the speed to full tempo as you master the solo.

I highly recommend Riffmasterpro

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Heavy metal riffs are the basis of most of the great heavy metal songs and in most instances are reasonably easy to get a handle on.

Heavy metal evolved out of the blues and many riffs draw heavily upon the blues or pentatonic scales.  If you spend a little time to learn and master these basic components of guitar playing, you will find that you will be able to figure out many guitar riffs .  These scales are not difficult to master and if you focus upon training your fingers and ears to become proficient with them you have taken big steps towards being a capable all round guitar player.

Some of the earliest Heavy Metal guitar riffs put together by pioneers like Tony Iommi and Ritchie Blackmore pretty much pointed the way for all Heavy Metal players.  Classic tracks like Smoke On the Water, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Speed King and Paranoid  all contain the essential elements of a great riff and to my mind are essential listening for all prospective guitar players.

None of these riffs are particularly difficult  and Smoke On The Water and Paranoid are perhaps two of the simplest straight forward songs but their brilliance lies within their simplicity (With the exception of Blackmore's solo in Smoke which is simply outstanding).  Both tunes make great studies and the riffs are easy enough to master.  Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Speed King are a little more difficult structurally containing multiple riffs and phrases within the tunes,but the basic riffs contained within these songs again are easy enough to get a handle on.

Once you have several heavy metal riffs mastered you can begin to work out heaps as many patterns are similar.

If you want to progress further quicker, a great resource I found is this Heavy Metal Guitar guide written by a heavy metal player for heavy metal players

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I teach guitar in Ararat, Victoria and charge $20 per half hour session. 
The rate is cheap and within half  an hour I can usually take a typical student through a particular piece or technique, gt them familiar with it and set them some practice exercises.
While I enjoy teaching and I dleiver a quality service, I cannot compete in a straight out value sense with online guitar lessons.
Programs like Jamorama charge a one off fee for a set number of lessons which will honestly take me over a year to deliver to the average student – if they practice and remain motivated.
The immediacy of online guitar lessons is is another huge advantage, allowing the student to progress at heir own pace through a set structured program.
The better courses have video instruction and allow the student to play the piece over and over again until they get it right.
While one on one lessons provide for an individual approach, there is only so much that can be delivered in a weekly session.
My sincere advice to people seeking guitar tuition is to investigate online guitar lessons. from a program like Guitar tricks which offer some free lessons to start with.
If you find that you like the delivery and style, I would highly recommend using this cheap guitar lesson alternative

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Here’s a quick video I put together showing you the G Major pentatonic scale in 2nd Position
Pentatonic Scales (or variations thereof) are the building blocks for 95% of all rock and blues scales.  I intend to put together a series of basic videos explaining how they work.
I’m using a battered old nylon string acoustic that I use to give most of my lessons on.
It’s just convenient to use 

Hope you get something out of it

Technorati Tags: blues guitar scales, G Major, learn guitar, learn guitar solo, Pentatonic scale, rock guitar solo

Watching great musicians jam is one of the most magical experiences that the ordinary mortal can have the pleasure of witnessing.  They seem to be able to follow each other through key changes, mood and tempo swings almost as if they’re reading each other’s mind.

The truth is that they’re not magical – gifted definitely, but in the large part the gift is a learned skill.  It’s the ability to recognise the tone and pitch of the note instantly with ears trained to do it.

So how do you learn to recognise pitch?

The first step is to make suer that you always play in tune – not just with yourself – AT CONCERT PITCH!

This may mean investing in a guitar tuner.  Take it from me it’s the best investment you will ever make.  

Once you’ve got your tuner, make sure that when you tune up make sure that you can hear those six notes as you tune them – you want to know what those six notes sound like.  It’s the first building block to successful ear training.

From there it’s a step by step process of recognising how different notes and chords sound.  Its a gradual process and the key is to concentrate on what you’re doing, by concentrate  I mean really listen to the chords and notes that you play.  I’ve even gone to the step of recording chord progressions  and playing them in the car over and over again, with a voice over saying “G chord” and playing several bars then Cm chord and playing several bars – its probably not as entertaining as your current music selection but it helps you learn to hear and that’s one of the key ingredients to really being able to play the guitar.

A great short cut to training your ears is this very affordable ear training power course only recently release, the course will help you train those ears to recognize melodies, chords and progressions and play them on your guitar right after hearing them. And it significantly reduces the amount of time necessary to figure out solos and songs.

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Learning to solo is hard work – you have to learn your scales and licks and then practice improvising them and the only way to do that is to practice improvising them over music.

This can be a terrifying experience for the novice guitar player – there is nothing worse than fumbling around with your licks in the presence of others who seem to have their chops together.

When I started, I used to painstakingly record chord progressions on a small tape recorder and then play my solos over these progressions.  It worked, but it was time consuming and limited in as much as I only had my one guitar to play over – there were no drums or bass.

Thankfully, in today’s digital age  there are some great options that allow you to improvise over professional backing tracks for relatively very small cost.

The best of these I’ve found to be the excellent 50 Blues Backing tracks provided by Zack Roberts.  Zack is a blues professional, having been a regular contributor to Guitar Player  and Guitar World Magazines and he has provided an exceptional package for the serious blues guitar player.

The backing tracks cover a variety of styles, speeds and keys and Zack include no less than nine special bonus’ including

• Ear music education software
• Blues Guitar essential course with 20 additional MP3 tracks
• Digital Guitar Tuner
• Learn to play guitar eBook
• Learn to read sheet music report

This is a priceless resource and I highly recommend it

Check it out now buy clicking here

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This might sound silly but what do you want to do with the guitar? Think about it – what is it that you want to achieve – do you want to impress your mates because you can play their favorite song note perfect?  Do you want to sit around the campfire and sing Bob Dylan songs, Do you want to play in a hot jazz combo or play red hot guitar like Steve Vai or Steve Morse.  Do you just want to wail away and play the blues?  Maybe you want to be a classical guitar player.  Whatever it is- crystallize it and focus upon it. THEN WRITE IT DOWN IN BIG BOLD LETTERS THAT YOU'RE GOING TO SEE EVERYDAY It might sound corny but it is a psychological trigger that reminds you of what you want to do – it reminds you that you have to practice to reach your goal. So how often should you practice? – regularly and often is a pretty glib answer but it's the truth as I know it, but it's only half the truth. There is no point in practicing what you know – with one exception and I'll get to that in a minute. Set yourself an aim of perfecting what you almost know – concentrate on the things you aren't getting right – they are the pieces you learn from and improve with.  Aim to learn one piece at a time – get it right then move on – as your repertoire goes and your ears and technique improve you will be amazed at how many songs you can pick up instantly. Remember that you are training yourself to become a musician – not a mechanic.  Your ears need to be trained.  It is absolutely vital that you keep your guitar tuned. It's a simple tip but many guitarists starting out look at it as a sport or a mechanical exercise and they don't tune the guitar but boy can they play fast, regrettably in alternating strange keys that musicians can't actually find. This is why you play scales – to train your fingers – sure – but more importantly to train your ears.  If there is one thing you do should do every day it is practice your scales (and preferably arpeggios) for at least fifteen minutes and listen to what your playing.  You have to know what the notes in the scale of G major sound like just as much as knowing where your fingers go.  If you open your ears while you play scales it becomes an interesting exercise – playing them at he speed of light has its place – but that should be your final aim.  Good technique and trained ears are much more important. Allocate time each day to practice and stick to it.  It will even help if your the undisciplined type like myself to set a program like this example

• 20 minutes scales
• 20 minutes arpeggios
• 20 minutes 2- 5-1 progressions
• 30 minutes Van Halen licks
• 30 minutes Chord inversions
• 30 minutes picking technique
• 10 minutes scales
• 10 minutes arpeggios

Yes I know that's nearly three hours but that's reasonable for a serious musician – in fact it's nowhere near enough if you want to reach the top, but its probably long enough to take a break before getting back into another session and of course, your regime may be entirely different – that's up to you – but you need to be disciplined and strong about this.  Remember your goal and go for it.

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When I started playing guitar many years ago I fell for perhaps the silliest trap that I could fall for. For some reason, I thought that if I could master the chord positions and get my left hand to move fast I would have mastered the guitar and be entertaining and amazing my friends in no time flat. As a result, I wasted an inordinate amount of time solely focusing on my left hand technique. Boy, was I dumb. Playing the guitar in many ways can be likened to driving a car.  Your left hand steers the course and the right hand provides the momentum, the brakes and the gear changes.  One is useless without the other . Imagine sitting in your car, with your hands on the steering wheel, with the motor running and no means of putting the car in gear or having the means to move but no steering capacity.  Each element needs the other to make it work properly. So how do you consistently build both techniques? At the risk of sounding boring, I find scales to be the most effective means of improving both hands' technique, while at the same time training my ears to hear the right notes.  Yes, I know that some people say you don't need to play guitar scales, but I'm yet to see a pro who doesn't know theirs backwards, sideways and upside down! You don't need to spend a lot of time each day – maybe 15 – 30 minutes at first, but the idea is to concentrate completely on getting your technique right during those periods.  Start slowly and focus upon the following points

• getting your left hand's fingers to land exactly behind the fret ensuring that each note sounds crisp and clear
• Whatever right hand technique you choose make sure that you are getting it right.  If it's classical rest stroke make sure you alternate your index and median figures on each note – if it's alternate rock picking as favoured by virtuosos like Steve Morse make sure that each note is picked in the opposite direction to the last.  This is easier said then done and requires concentration in the early stages.
• Listen completely to each note as you play it.  Say the note out loud to emphasise the point
• Work with a metronome to get your right hand trained to working in time
• FORGET ABOUT SPEED until you have your basics mastered than gradually build over time.  You cant play fast unless your technique is sound with both hands.  To attempt to play fast before you are ready is like trying to drive while under the influence.  You might fool yourself but you won't fool anybody else

In summary, what you need to do is to view your guitar as an instrument that requires total control  with both hands.  Focusing on basic technique with both hands is the solid foundation for good guitar playing.

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