Guitar Course

This course will help players from intermediate to advanced and possibly even beginners. This course will cover a lot of different techniques in great detail.To get the most from this course i recommend that you follow everything in its given order.Each section will be added with time giving everyone the chance to work at the necessary technique before the next section begins.DONT SKIP ANYTHING no matter how boring you may find it.EVERYTHING is equally important including the boring exercises.The scale page is a reference page for people to check out any given scale on this course and by the end of this course everyone will know them all.There will be a chord page too when the time comes.Its important to put everything you learn and practise into a musical context which we will be looking at in more detail when we get to the 'improvising' section and 'combinations' part of the course.

In regards to practise make sure you practise regularly and dont let a day pass where you dont pick your guitar up.After a few weeks of hard practise a rest is good but ONLY after a lot of hard work is put in first otherwise you will get lazy and lose determination which is the most important factor in mastering guitar! Determination followed closely by patience and a genuine love for music.Following are some terms and rules you should follow through out this course.Read them ALL and refer back to them if needed.There is also a notes on the board page for people to refer to if they are uncertain of the notes on the board.Its CRUCIAL that you learn everysingle note on every single fret inside out and back to front.So assign 5 minutes of every day to practising your notes on the board.Simply pick a note in your head and try to find that note on each different string on the guitar.For best effect practise doing this with a metronome and increase the NPB value each day till you have it mastered.

  WARMING UP This is so important to do before you start any type of practise session involving muscles.Athletes do it and so should guitar players.There are sooooo many things that can go wrong for you if you dont warm up and some of them can end your playing for good and lead to unrepairable damage to your hands,arms and even neck. To warm up its good to soak your hands in warm water and to give them a good shake to get the blood flowing and then gently massage the hand and each finger for a few seconds followed by some basic open chord songs and some easy scales exercises.You should spend up to 10 minutes warming up before you launch into anything hard or testing.YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

  FINGER PER FRET This is an incredibly important term.When you play its important that you try when ever possible to keep each finger allocated to a certain fret.For example if your 4 fingers are situated over the fretboard with your 1st finger over the 1st fret and your 2nd over the 2nd fret etc,you should use your 1st finger to fret ALL notes in the 1st fret and your 2nd to finger all the notes in the 2nd and so on.Dont for example slide your fist finger up to play the 2nd fret note when you already have a perfectly good finger there ready to play the note.Its a waste of time and speed.This is an important part in the economy of motion rule.

  LISTEN TO WHAT YOU PLAY A lot of players concentrate too heavily on what there fingers LOOK like their doing when they play and they are wasting precious hearing time.Listen to what you play and forget about the appearance of your fingers gracing the fretboard.Your sense of pitch and your improvisation skills will improve tenfold for it.After all music is about the sound.And all that matters is the end product that flows from your amp and not how beautiful or scary your fingers may look running around.JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES AND LISTEN TO YOUR PLAYING and concentrate on the different intervals and tones of the scales and chords.

  SEMI TONE/HALF STEP - WHOLE TONE/FULL STEP A semi or half tone/step is the distance of one fret for example the 1st to the 2nd fret or an E to an F note.A Whole or Full tone/Step is the distance of two frets for example the 1st to the 3rd fret or an E to an F# note

  METRONOME This is essential to develop a tidy and accurate technique so make sure you practise everything you can with it.Just sub-divide the beat.For example if you have you metronome set to 100 BPM (Beats Per Minute) try playing through a scale at one NPB (Notes Per Beat) and then two NPB etc.The most effective way is to practise playing 3 or 4 NPB.Its harder to play things at a slower pace as there is more room for timing errors so dont be showing off with your metronome set at 250 BPM.A good thing to do is to increase the BPM of any given exercise in increments of 5-10 a day once you reach a comfortable tempo.

  PLAYING WITHOUT TABS I found its an awful lot more ffective for a player to try and learn pieces with as little help from tablature as possible.Tablature is important to get the proper information thats needed but try not to be too reliant on it as it will not help your musicality and memory power.You will find the more things you memorize,the more able and quicker you your memory will be. And besides you cant bring your tabs up on stage with you.,;)

  PICK/PLEC AND STRING GAUGE Its best to use the heaviest pick/plec you can find or at least one that doesnt bend too much.If your pick/plec bends the time it takes to return to its original state will waste precious milli seconds on you and ultimately affect your coordination and also your tone.A heavy pick is great for accenting with attitude ;) String gauge is personal opinion.The heavier the gauge the better and fuller your sound will be but that comes at the price of sacrificing your ability to bend/vibrato with more ease and less pain and stress to the fingers.The standard gauge and the one i recommend would have to be '9-42'.And its important to change your strings frequently if you practise a lot.You should at least change them once every two weeks.Dirty strings affect intonation and sustain and the brightness from the strings.

  THE SPIDER Here is a great exercise for developing independence between your fingers.Its named as if performed correctly it has the appearance of spiders legs walking across your board.Try it with EXAMPLE 1 in the alternate picking section.Play the low e string and after each note you play keep that finger held down and dont move it.So you have just played 1,then2,then3,then 4 on the low E-String and all 4 fingers are still remaining on those frets.Now simply move the 1st finger ALONE to the next string on the 1st fret while keeping your other fingers where they are.Now your first finger is on the a string 1st fret while your 2nd/3rd and 4th fingers are still on their related frets on the low e string.Now move your 2nd finger ALONE to the next string 2nd fret while keeping your other fingers stationary.Keep repeating this with all of your fingers.If performed at a quick enough tempoand correctly you will have your spider!!!!

  EXAGGERATION When practising things slowly its great to exaggerate your pick/plec motion as it helps install into your brain and muscles the memory of that motion which will greatly benefit your accuracy and speed with time. It can also work for your fret hand.But only do this when practising at slower tempos.

  HOLDING THE PICK/PLEC Its important that your pick/plec faces toward your guitar when playing.Wheter it is held at an angle or not i think is up to personal preference and comfort.So many great players have different ways that they hold it.Just make sure you dont hold it too tightly and dont have too much of it sticking out.Mostly only the bare tip of the pick/plec should grace the string.The more you stick into the string the more it will be likely to meet resistance and get stuck.So hold it with as light a grip as possible and make sure your pick/plec hand is relaxed.This too will lead to greater speed and help prevent damage to your hand.