10 Reasons why You need a Metronome (part 2)

Right, so it turns out that my “10 Reasons” why you should get a metronome fills two whole (pretty long) blog posts! I can’t say I’m surprised, if you don’t already own or use a metronome you really are missing out on something that will improve your playing no end.

If you’re not already convinced that using a metronome can change your life (…or at least your playing…), then here are yet another five reasons to use one.

5 More Reasons to use a Metronome

6. Getting Creative

I touched on this point in the (popular) post “How to Solo“, and I do believe that using a metronome can increase your creativity. How? Well, if you put the metronome on- any speed will do- you can start to “jam” or improvise to the beat that the metronome provides. Yes, OK, it’s not quite as good as a real drummer but you really can start to “groove” to a metronome beat.

The best part about this is that you have the freedom to chose the style, and rhythm that you want to play- which is a great way to learn to just “play what’s in your head”.

I discuss these exercises in more detail in the above article. For me, one of the main things a metronome does is force you to keep going at the same pace- no matter what. It’s just this sort of “go with the flow” attitude that you need for improvisation, as opposed to making every note count (that can come later on…).

7. Rhythm Playing

Linking in to reason four earlier (in the previous article) which was about different divisions of the beat; using a metronome will really help improve your “rhythm guitar” playing. I’m writing “rhythm guitar” in quotation marks because I don’t believe in separating “lead” and “rhythm” guitar playing- to me it’s all just guitar playing. However, what I’m referring to is chord playing.

Obviously, even though I disagree with the label, it’s called “rhythm guitar” for a reason! It means you need to have good timing in order to play it (don’t go thinking that playing chords is always easier than solos). So, once you’re comfortable with the various ways of dividing the beat you need to work on turning those notes into chords- and, eventually, a song.

8. Transcribing Songs

I realise we’re now getting into the benefits of having good timing, rather than what you can do with a metronome- but the whole reason you’re using a metronome is so that your timing improves, right?

One of the things that using a metronome has helped me with (and I’m sure you’ll find the same with practice) is tabbing out songs. Once I hear a rhythm, I can almost replay it in my head (at a slower speed), imagining a metronome tick to it and from there I can work out how the beat is divided. Which is how I’m able to tab out the rhythm to songs- something I’m constantly doing for my private tuition students. All of this is made possible by hours of practice with a metronome.

9. Track Your Progress

One of the main motivational factors out there (other than sticking your favourite DVD or record on, of course) is the metronome. This ties right in with the very first three reasons why you need a metronome (from the previous article). A metronome allows you to actually measure how well you can play something (technique-wise, feeling is another article…) by giving you a number in bpm of how fast you’re playing.

This is a very powerful tool, because it allows you to say things like “I’m going to aim to be able to play this at 150bpm”, or “Last week I could only play this lick at 50bpm, but today I can play it at 75bpm!”, and gives you a direct measure of improvement. Measuring your technical improvement like this will help you in the times when it feels like you are getting nowhere, you’ll always have the metronome speed to look back on and know that you’re “10bpm faster” than before

10. You’re not online forever

You’re not going to be online forever to take advantage of the metronome at the top of my site. Anyway, a dedicated metronome is going to be more reliable than your browser (which has many other things to do). So go! Get your own metronome! Then you can take it everywhere with you…at least, everywhere you’re likely to practice guitar!

If you want to stay updated on this blog, please don’t forget to subscribe.

Rob.
Still practicing with a metronome

February 9, 2010 at 1:56 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises, Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments

10 Reasons why You need a Metronome!

So, I talk about it almost every time I mention practice routine, or speed building, or guitar technique…the list goes on and I’m sure you get the point here- I find metronome use pretty essential!

It’s so important in fact, that I’ve recently installed a little javascript metronome to my site (there should be a button in one of the sidebars called “metronome”), just in case you don’t own one yourself and want to get the most out of the technical exercises here on the site (it opens in a new window- pretty basic, but all it needs to do is go “click” at different speeds…).

I’ve placed it near the top of the site, and it’s on pretty much every page (so now there’s no excuse not to be practicing when browsing the site!). So that you can make the most out of this new gadget, here are 10 reasons why you absolutely NEED to own a metronome if you want to become the best musician you can be.

Reasons You Need a Metronome

1. Slowing Down

One of the main uses you’ll find for this (sometimes annoying) clicking box is that it allows you to play a song/lick/exercise at a slower tempo without being out of time. As long as you’re happy with where the beats are in relation to what you’re playing (if not, and you would prefer to hear the whole song slowed down, go here).

The main big advantage of slowing the song down is that you can start at a pace that suits you. If what you’re trying to play is too fast at one tempo, slow it right down until you’re relaxed and can play it without feeling rushed. Then, slowly increase the pace (measured in bpm, or “beats per minute”) until you’re playing at full speed -or faster- with the same, relaxed, unrushed feel. For best results you’ll probably want to increase the tempo by so little at a time that you don’t even notice the change. This is how people end up shredding really fast with very little effort- because they’ve increase the speed slowly (and, before you know it, you’ll be shredding like that too…with practice of course!).

2. Speeding Up

Exactly the opposite of my first point, right?

WRONG! You see, once you’ve got your playing up to full speed (slowly, of course!) it’s best to speed it up so that you’re playing it even faster than the original. Why? Because then you can shre…no, this has nothing to do with super-fast guitar playing! It’s because then you can bring the speed back down to “full” speed and you’ll be extra confident and will make less mistakes.

Essentially, make things hard on yourself when you’re practicing- push yourself further than you need to go- so that when you play the real thing it seems easy. When I say push yourself, I mean slowly with the right technique, or course! Never just “play through” pain or discomfort!

3. Stay the Same Speed

OK, now you might be thinking I’m going a bit mad! My third reason you need a metronome is that it’s a great way to stay at the same speed. What am I talking about? I just said that metronomes are to help you slow down…or speed up…now they’re helping you stay the same speed aswell?!

You should slowly be realising the awesome power of what is, essentially, a little ticking box (or, in the case of the online one here, a little digital snare drum player…). The problem is that when you play a song, or a riff- or even an exercise- you’ll naturally be more hesitant and slower on the more difficult bits and yet want to speed up on the slower parts. The solution? Yes, you guessed it- the awesome power of the metronome!

The metronome will always tick at the speed you set it to- no gradual speeding up or slowing down. Yes, some find this boring, but to us musicians it’s one of the best features! The metronome will keep perfect time even when you can’t! He is unfazed by the difficulty of whatever you’re playing.

4. Rhythmic Subdivisions

Many people, when they start out with a metronome, only play one note for each click- whereas, in fact, the humble metronome can be used for greater purposes. Try playing two notes for each click, or four. The most interesting (read: hardest) ones to try are 3, 5, 6 and 7 notes per click- because each note needs to be an equal length (i.e. with 3 notes per beat each note is “a third of a beat” long…). This leads on to the next point, which is…

5. Listen to what You’re Playing

In order to be able to play all of these fancy subdivisions of beats, fast or slow tempos and…well…medium tempos…you’re going to need to listen hard to what you’re playing. A metronome will really help you to do this, in fact it’ll almost force you! There have definitely been some times when I’ve thought my playing was perfect but then heard the metronome and thought to myself “what’s the metronome doing? It’s timing sucks!”- alas, no, the metronome is always right in these arguments

Now, you may have noticed that I said there were 10 reasons, and I’ve only done 5 so far…this is going to have to go on to another post (I’ve just got so much good to say about the metronome!). Stay tuned for part 2 with even more reasons you should buy one (yay!).

Rob.
Practicing with a metronome.

February 8, 2010 at 9:28 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises, Practicing and Practice Routine | 2 comments

Guitar Lessons: Sweep Picking

In this next video I demonstrate sweep picking (and further on, something called “sweep tapping”), on an acoustic guitar. Now, sweep picking as a technique doesn’t have to be performed on an acoustic- you may also want to try in on an electric guitar (as, often, heavy metal bands do). Whichever kind of guitar you choose, you must remember that it’s proper co-ordination that’s the most important part of this technique; You should work on developing this first- at slow speeds.

Click here if you can’t see the video

Start Slowly

As I say in the first sweep picking exercise from the “Exercise” section, it’s best to start with smaller shapes and play them very slowly to a metronome. When you can play the two and three string shapes perfectly at, say 40 to 50 bpm then you can increase the tempo (by maybe 5bpm).

I’m not joking when I say that increasing by 10bpm at a time is too much- no matter how good you think you are! The whole point of taking it slowly is to get it perfect. If you increase the speed by 5bpm at a time, you probably won’t even notice the speed increase, but step by step you’ll be taking that perfect (but slow) sweep up to almost unbelievable speeds. All the time you’ll be stepping up the speed and hardly even noticing it.

Patience makes Perfect

I’m often surprised by how many people forget this aspect of guitar practice. There is no “secret” to becoming a master of guitar, just practice, determination, and patience (of course, subscribing to a blog with such good advice is also recommended ). It’s only when you can play something perfectly at a slow speed that you’ll be able to play it perfectly at a fast speed.

…and only then should you even start thinking about progressing to 5 or 6 string sweeps.

Accuracy, patience, determination, and practice- the four key factors of a successful guitar player.

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February 3, 2010 at 8:39 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | 1 comment

Guitar Lessons: Fingerpicking

Continuing the series on my guitar technical exercise videos, I wanted to talk a little bit about fingerpicking. Although this type of guitar playing is rarely used by many modern guitar players, I think it is still a valid technique for both acoustic and electric guitar playing- and I use it some of the time myself. If you’ve been reading my posts you may remember that I started out learning fingerstyle before using a pick, therefore it seems only natural that my “beginner guitar lesson” videos should feature this playing style.

Click here if you can’t see the video.

Finger Picking

The basic ideas behind fingerstyle and fingerpicking are the same as they are for legato and alternate picking techniques with your fretting hand. That is: economy of motion, finger independence, wrist angle, correct muscles etc,. My philosophy is that your hands are both built to the same design (or evolved to the same shape…but I’m not getting into that one…), therefore your fingers all move in the same way.

If you remember the “fretboard finger trap”, you’ll know that the real secret is moving only the right muscles- and for finger independence this means the muscles in between your fingers (not so much the ones in your arm). You’ll also want to use different combinations of fingers (to avoid having -or developing- favourites).

Spicing Things Up

The most interesting thing about this exercise is that you can add chords with your fretting hand; then you’re not just playing an exercise, but playing a rhythm part to a song (or writing a new song). There are also many combinations (or “orders”) of fingers that you can use- the same as with my alternate picking exercise, 1 2 3 4, 1 3 2 4 etc,.

You can try adding in your little finger for these exercises, and I would encourage the use of your little finger and do use it myself (although it’s rarely really needed). In standard classical guitar technique you wont likely hear anything about picking with the little finger- and it’s not very often used (if ever). Still, it has it’s uses.

I use my little finger for fingerpicking because I use a technique called “hybrid picking”, which allows me to switch between using a pick and using my fingers within the same song (or even the same lick). If I’m holding the pick with my thumb and first finger (“p” and “i” in tab/notation) I would only have my second and third fingers (“m” and “a”) to pick with- and -what can I say?- sometimes that’s not enough for me. So I add my little finger (“c”) to go along with it and get some extra notes.

If you like my blog, please don’t forget to subscribe.
Rob.

February 2, 2010 at 3:24 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | No comments

Les Paul Comes Back to Life!

…No -before you ask- I’m not talking about the famous musician who was in his 90’s and inspired the design of one of the most recognised guitars in rock history (sorry!); I’m talking about one of my favourite guitars, which somehow became broken last year.

Well, I say somehow, it was kinda careless of me now I think back to it. It was about a year ago, just after Christmas. I remember not long before that I had written the riff to “Gallows”- a Frost Hammer song- which I had written in Drop D tuning on my Black Les Paul Studio, and the band were just about getting to the stage where we were forming all our influences into one unique sound.

In fact, when the band started we had such a wide range of influences (I say a wide range, it was all rock and metal!), we couldn’t yet see how it would gell together as a band. There was still an element of mystery to the project; it was a time when everything seemed just around the corner and nothing could go wrong…

That was until I -rather stupidly- placed my Les Paul up against my Randal Warhead X2, 300 watt amp (it actually has a sticker on it that says “Warning: Do not turn the gain all the way up”- with no hint of “tongue in cheek” humour…). Anyway, standing my guitars against the speaker cab wasn’t unusual for me at the time- but nor was it very safe, as I found out!

Smashed!

The full extent of the damage that happened next wasn’t something I realised right away. Maybe I hadn’t stood the guitar up securely, maybe something (or someone) had bumped into it; All I know is: my beautiful Les Paul Studio came crashing to the ground! Having been around guitars for years, I’ve seen a few fall over- so I just stood it right back up. Although this time things were different.

What I had forgotten was that the room with all my guitars in used to be a garage- and that means hard, unfriendly, concrete floor!

Picking up the Pieces

So my guitar stood back up against my amp, and I didn’t think more of it…until, hours later, I saw something strange on the floor. I leant down to take a closer look at this odd object- I have known students to leave picks, bubble wrap, and all sorts of random things everywhere, so this wasn’t a new experience for me.

On closer inspection, it appeared to be a machine head, and right away I was reminded of the guitar that came crashing to the ground- which was now missing the back part of the machine head and only the shaft with the string attached was hanging from the head of the guitar.

I was devastated. This guitar has cost me over £600, and Les Pauls really are my dream guitars. All I could keep thinking was “I’m never going to be able to play her again”.

A New Start

Don’t ask why it’s taken me just over a year to sort out a new tuning peg (a combination of money, time, and shops not having the right ones!), but here it is: my Les Paul, back from the grave!

…or at least back from standing on the stand in the corner of my room getting dusty…

I will always use a guitar stand in future; I’ve learnt my lesson!

Click here if you can’t see the video

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February 1, 2010 at 8:34 pm | Music News and Opinions | No comments

Guitar Lessons: Finger Independance

This exercise is very similar to the alternate picking exercise, in that it is alternate picked and kinda chromatic (although it doesn’t have to be). The big difference here, however, is that the shape requires you to change strings- which, with practice, will help your fingers become more independent and agile.

Click here if you can’t see the video

…and here is the tab (opens in new window).

String Skipping

In the first variation of this exercise, your first finger needs to move from the D string up to the G string on the same fret in order to play the last note. This is one step on from the chromatic exercises that have you playing up and done along one string at a time because as you progress through each variation you’re crossing strings with a different finger.

Each time you play a note on the G string with a single finger, that finger needs to be independent enough to move away from the others and fret the note without bringing your other fingers with it. The first few times you try this, you may find that your fingers have trouble separating (especially your third finger)- and this will either prevent you from getting the note on the G string, or give you trouble coming back to the D string.

Don’t worry if this is difficult at first, I mean, that’s the whole point of the exercise: to eventually make this easy.

One Finger per Fret

As (almost) always, when you play this exercise, try to stick to the “one finger per fret” approach, because this produces the best economy of motion. This means if you’re playing from the forth fret, your first finger plays the notes on that fret, your second finger is for the fifth fret, third finger for sixth fret etc,. This position will also help to emphasise that you only move one finger across to the G string when you need the note, and your little finger should stay hovering over the D string, seventh fret, ready for the next note.

For this exercise there is no exception to this rule- even when you play the seventh fret, G string you should be using your little finger (you roll it across from one string to the next- a bit like a barre but without holding both notes down). You want to make sure that it’s your fingers that are moving, and not your hand; your hand should be kept in one place for the whole exercise (no twisting, or rolling to “help” your fingers reach).

Rhythmic Variation

If you want to make the best of this exercise (and, also prevent yourself from becoming bored), there are a number of ways that you can build on the basic idea to come up with your own variations. Working out variations this way will obviously improve what you’re capable of technically on guitar, but some -especially with this exercise- can also improve your musicality (what a bonus!).

In the video I demonstrate some of the variations that I’ve come up with for the exercise. Namely: skipping an extra string (so instead of playing between the D and G strings, you play between the D and B strings); playing in odd rhythmic divisions (this is the one that’ll improve your musicality because, to me, the exercise can be played as either 3 or 4 notes per beat, but you can try any number you like!); and playing the exercise “backwards” (this one I actually totally make up on the spot in the video, and it’s more like playing it “upsidown” than “backwards” because I play it on the D and A strings- with the single note being on the A string instead of the G string).

Discuss

Have you used this exercise? How did you find it? I would also be interested if anyone has made up any further variations on this exercise- what about playing it with hammer-ons and pull offs? or tapping? How about fingerpicked?

If you come up with an interesting variation on this, or even just have a question, leave your comment below. I’m looking forward to responses.

If you like my blog, please don’t forget to subscribe.
Rob.

January 28, 2010 at 2:31 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | No comments

Guitar Lessons: Bending and Vibrato

I think this video has confused alot of people with how it starts. To be fair, I don’t start by playing any bending or vibrato, nor do I do the usual “hey, this is Rob from Chainsaw Guitar Tuition” introduction. I, in fact, start off by shredding (if you can call it that, I’m not really a fan of the word…).

What I’m trying to show is that there are two main fretting hand positions for guitar. I start off using the “classical position” for alternate picking, legato, and sweeping; the hand position I always recommend. Then I use some string bending to demonstrate the correct hand position for bending and vibrato. Sorry if that confused people in the first few seconds of the video.

Click here if you can’t see the video

How to Bend on Guitar

The exercises I’m talking about in the video can be found here, but they wont help unless you practice them properly. You want to use your arm (as I demonstrate in the video) to provide the power, and your fingers just to grip the string. You’ll achieve this best by placing your thumb up over the top of the neck, and using it almost like a pivot.

Sometimes, especially when you first learn this technique, the other strings can get caught on your fingernails as you move the string; this problem can be due to you moving your fingers instead of your arm. When you twist from the arm, your fingers naturally angle themselves on the string, whereas when you move your fingers to get the bend you end up pushing your finger under the next string (if you don’t believe me, try it yourself, first by moving your finger, then by twisting your wrist with your thumb at the top, and you’ll see what I mean).

Getting a Grip

Sometimes you’ll also need to “support” the fretting finger with others- and “support” is in quotation marks for a reason! The support is not for strength or more power, because the power is coming from the arm; the support is for grip.

Think about it: the more power you’re sending in to bend the string, the more likely it is that your finger will slip, therefore you need more grip.

For example: say you were bending a note with your third finger. You may decide to place your first and second fingers on the same string, behind your third finger- not necessarily aligned to a fret (they don’t have to be, they’re not playing notes themselves!). Then move your thumb up over the top of the neck and twist your arm. If you’ve done it right, your fingers hold on to the string and it bends as you twist.

Perfect Pitch

The second most important thing about bending is: always bend to a note. Now, this gets kind of complicated because the notes that you’ll want to bend to aren’t always the same ones as the frets. For practice reasons, practice bending up to a note that you can fret and getting it spot on- like the example of unison bends that I use.

The complicated part is (are you ready for this?): the notes in western music are divided into 12 semitones (each half a tone wide), and these basically align with the frets on a guitar (ever wondered why the notes repeat after the 12th fret?). The problem is that when Blues music came along (along with other types of “non-western” influenced musical styles), it divided the octave (those 12 semitones) into 24 quartertones.

So, when you’re bending notes on a guitar, you’re actually thinking in terms of quartertones (each quartertone being “half a fret”). This is why you sometimes see 1/2, or 3 1/2 fret bends in tab- but you’ll probably never see “bend to somewhere random”! So always have an idea where you’re bending to before you start to bend…

…if you want your music sounding in tune, that is…

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I hope this has helped,
Rob.

January 27, 2010 at 1:56 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | No comments

Guitar Lessons: Legato

Continuing this weeks series on the guitar exercises from the website, this post is about legato technique. If you don’t know what legato is, it’s what’s commonly referred to in “guitar slang” as “hammer-ons and pull-offs”- a name that should give you an idea of how this technique is performed.

The Italian word “legato” means smooth sounding (and I believe Italian is used by musicians to make it sound more clever and obscure than it really is), and hammer-ons and pull-offs on guitar do sound smoother than alternated picking, for example. However, the term “legato” really refers to the type of sound -rather than the guitar technique- so you could equally describe two handed tapping or sweep picking as “legato”.

In the video I concentrate exclusively on the fretting hand; this is because in classical guitar technique is is standard to play musical passages marked “legato” with hammer-ons and pull-offs (remember classical technique doesn’t use guitar tab, so the music will just tell you “legato”- marked with a slur).

Click here if you can’t see the video

Legato Technique

Using only the fretting hand in this way requires a fair amount of finger strength, as you are literally hammering your fingertips onto the strings to sound them (and then plucking the string with the same finger for the “pull-off”). To hammer on to the string, make sure the movement comes from the finger itself; I don’t want to see you using your hand or arm for “extra force”- no matter how tempting it may be, this will only injure you in the long run.

Aim your finger at the part of the string right next to the fret- the closer the better (this will take practice getting it accurate- oh and you’re fingers can get sore if they’re not used to it!). This is, as I mentioned in a previous post, almost the same action as you might do when you’re bored. You know, when you’re tapping your fingers on the table? If you don’t believe me, try it right now and watch your fingers. Is your hand or arm moving? No (well, to be fair, you would look a bit odd if you started thrashing your arms around to hit your fingers on a table top in the middle of that boring meeting…).

Slowly Stretch

Next, you want to start at a relatively high fret, say the 10th where the distance between the frets is about the same as the distance between your fingers anyway. In the video I use the 10th fret because it’s easy for me, and the body of my acoustic gets in the way if I go higher, but if you have an electric or acoustic with a cutaway body then you should be able to start even higher if necessary.

You really want to start in a position where you’re not struggling (in any way) to reach the notes- and I can’t stress that enough! Don’t start of by playing something that’s already difficult; start off with something that’s easy, get it perfect, and then gradually push yourself, bit by bit. Be warned: this will take patience and dedication- but in the end it’s so worth it!

As I move further down the neck (I.E. towards the first fret), where the frets are further apart, my technique doesn’t change; my hand is in the same position, just on a different part of the neck. I achieve the stretch that this needs just by moving my fingers apart- and I developed my muscles to do that by practicing and slowly moving down from a fret that I could reach without stretching. Now the first fret isn’t a stretch for me.

Slow Motion

So, lower frets are harder, yes. Also, playing slower is harder; you have less momentum when playing slowly, and if you’re thinking “oh, but I want to play as fast as possible” you should realise that the point of legato isn’t about speed. The point of legato is to sound “smooth” and “fluid”- that’s why we use the Italian word “legato”

So, in conclusion, start these exercises off at a medium pace (one that you can play easily), and on a set of frets that’s a comfortable width apart. Then gradually slow the exercise down and move it down to the first fret (you may want to do the slowing down and moving separately).

Eventually you should start to get comfortable all over the neck and at all different speeds- slow or fast.

If you would like to stay updated on these posts, you can subscribe with the link at the top right of the page.

Thanks,
Rob.

January 26, 2010 at 1:09 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | No comments

Guitar Lessons: Alternate Picking

This post is going to be the first in a series of blog posts about my YouTube videos. As a teacher, I have found that some things are better explained in a visual form, and some are explained better when written down. Which is which is different for different people, and therefore I thought it would be useful to have a “written version” of some of my technique lessons on YouTube.

Of course, there’s also the fact that the content of my videos is totally unscripted (although I think I’ll probably change that in future)! Yes, all the guitar playing, talking and singing (!) you might have seen in my lesson videos is, believe it or not, improvised (and if you haven’t seen my videos, go here). I tend to start off with a subject, write down a few notes to get my ideas together and then just go from there (almost the same way I would structure an improvised guitar solo!).

So here is my first free lesson video for beginner guitarists, where I explain how to play the guitar alternate picking exercises from the technical exercises section of the site.

Have we got a video? No? Click here.

OK, so first I want to talk a bit about my hand position and posture (although, due to technical constraints of having to stay in front of a camera, my body posture isn’t perfect the whole time…). What you should notice, however, is the position of my fretting hand relative to the guitar (something that is correct in this video).

Hand Position

Most of the time I use, and recommend the use of, something referred to as “classical position”- where the thumb stays behind the neck and your fingers are parallel to the frets. Your thumb being behind the neck, it allows your other fingers to stretch out and fret the notes, and with your fingers parallel to the strings you have the best “angle of attack” for all four digits (as twisting the hand will either favour your first or fourth finger, but disadvantage the rest).

My wrist is relatively straight when I play the exercises, and the plan is to keep it that way. Your fingers are attached to various tendons running along your forearm which, of course, have to travel through your wrist. If your wrist is bent you’re putting excess pressure on these tendons (which can be a direct cause of tendinitis- Repetitive Strain Injury!). However, you still have to remember that the main muscles we are thinking about when doing this exercise are the ones in the hand itself. The movement should come from your hand, with only limited sympathetic movement from your arms.

Picking

The actual picking motion I use in the video is alternate up and down strokes (hence, “alternate picking”). If you’ve never tried this before you’ll probably find hitting the string on the way up much harder than going down (at first). It pays to practice the upstroke more when you’re first starting out. You might even try playing every other note (just the upstrokes) or play the whole thing using just upstrokes (until you are comfortable with them). Make sure you aim to get the up and down strokes of an even volume, although downstrokes will always sound slightly “stronger” than downstrokes.

Metronome

As I stressed in the post “Sowing the Seeds of Success“, you must play all of these exercises to a metronome and speed up slowly. You have to speed it up much slower than I do in the video (as that is just for demonstration purposes).

When you get bored of the original “pattern”, you should mix it up a bit (as I demonstrate in the video). So, instead of playing 1 2 3 4, try 1 3 2 4 to keep you from getting too used to one pattern. It’s essential that you don’t just “get used to” the pattern, because then the exercise is useless. Just like an athlete, try and vary the training a bit to stay on top of your game (otherwise your body gets too used to certain exercises and they are less effective).

For even more information on this lesson, along with the guitar tab, click here.

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January 25, 2010 at 6:02 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | 2 comments

Guitar Hero Lessons?

Recently, I wrote a post called “Is Your Guitar Hero, Your Guitar Hero“, comparing the game “Guitar Hero” to actual, real-life guitar playing. I was trying to highlight the fact that there are several differences between the game and the instrument.

So I was quite surprised to read this article about a guitar teacher in Vermont, USA who actually uses the game as an educational aid.

Hopefully my post made clear where I stand on the subject- that it’s a fun game, but is no substitute for the real thing. To be honest, I’m not so sure where I stand on the idea of using a computer game to teach guitar. It sounds fun, but is it just a cheap way to get kids to pay for lessons?

I don’t agree that “what kids are really accomplishing via “Guitar Hero” — largely without realizing it — is learning basic music theory”, and surely learning to hit buttons in time to lights on a game is not going to bring out musical talent?

I may not know what to make of this, but I do know that playing guitar well is about more than just playing a set of notes accurately! I think this is something alot of people forget: it’s never about what you play, but how you play it. Something that experience on a computer can never teach you.

January 23, 2010 at 3:59 pm | Music News and Opinions | No comments

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