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Friday, February 26, 2010

Famous Rock Guitar Riffs

One of the best things about taking electric guitar lessons is that there is a huge range of famous rock guitar riffs to learn from and enjoy playing. Some rock guitar riffs are very easy to play and are suitable for even complete beginners to attempt while others are far more technically challenging and will require a few years of learning electric guitar before becoming available for the student to learn.


It is always recommended that you learn to play famous rock riffs which are within your current technical ability on guitar rather than concentrate on learning ones which are too difficult for you at this moment. Try to resist the temptation to learn your all time favourite rock guitar riffs until you are technically proficient enough on the instrument to be able to attempt them. This will help you to avoid many of the common frustrations students feel while trying to learn electric guitar and also ensure that your practice time is spent on doing things which will develop you as a guitarist rather than de-motivate you.

It’s easy to find a list of famous rock guitar riffs simply by doing a search for them on Google or YouTube. You’ll find that there are many videos of people teaching guitar riffs for free and that many successful guitar sites will also post sample videos to demonstrate the quality of their instruction. If you want to learn just a single famous guitar riff in particular then searching for free videos to show you how to play it is a great idea. If however you wish to learn rock guitar in a thorough way then its far better to follow a dedicated electric guitar program.

Remember that it’s always advisable to learn famous rock riffs in the correct and authentic way as this will help to develop and accelerate your guitar playing to its fullest potential.

Guitar Lessons For Beginners

If you are thinking about learning guitar then finding the best quality guitar lessons for beginners you can becomes extremely important. This is because learning to play guitar can be made very hard or very easy depending on the guitar method you choose to follow and not all beginner guitar lessons are equal in their effectiveness. Most good quality guitar websites will offer you the opportunity to try out some three sample videos before paying for a membership with their site and it is always recommended that you take the time to watch them. This will enable you to see if there a method of teaching guitar is going to be effective.


The truth is that not everyone understands how to deliver for guitar lessons for beginners properly. Often you’ll find that the lessons go too quickly or that the teacher fails to explain every point clearly enough for a complete novice to follow. This almost always frustration which is the number one reason why students fail in their attempts to learn guitar. When you begin guitar lessons it’s a crucial time when you’ll need the information delivered in a manner which is logical, well planned new rules gray is great for her and very clear. You always know when you are receiving good quality guitar lessons because you’ll feel as though you understand everything 100%.

One of the most important things is to never be in a rush to learn to play guitar. Every student has their own natural speed for learning a particular musical instrument and trying to force the pace will only be detrimental in the long run. It is especially important when taking guitar lessons for beginners that you allow things to progress naturally. The best method is to simply do your daily amount of practice and commit to staying with it for at least six months to one year. At this level of guitar playing it’s never about talent, the students who succeed are always the ones who practice consistently over a long period of time.

It is also important that you learn how to practice guitar correctly. Imagine that your brain is a tape recorder trying to record every action you make on guitar, when you practice in a hurried away and with lots of mistakes that is exactly how your brain is recording it. The correct way to practise is through playing everything very slowly, so slowly in fact that it becomes impossible for you to make a mistake. This will allow your mind to record everything you’re trying to do accurately and allow you to play without mistakes when the speedy everything up. It is only by practicing correctly that you will gain the most benefit from your guitar lessons for beginners.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Electric Guitar Lessons

If you're looking for the COOLEST electric guitar lessons on the web then check out Famous Riffs!




It will teach you some of the best and most famous electric guitar riffs from all time in a way which is easy to understand. Learning to play electric guitar in this way is one of the best methods you can use to quickly take your guitar playing to the next level. It's through understanding how other great guitar players wrote riffs that you'll be able to write great ones of your own!

Spanish Guitar Lessons

Hey everyone!

Just a quick note to let you all know that I'm working on a brand new site to teach Spanish Guitar Lessons. Very often sites teaching Spanish or Flamenco style guitar are put beyond the reach of the average guitar player and actually discourage them from trying. This is due to the fact that the techniques they teach often take years to master. My site is going to make learning authentic and beautiful sounding flamenco guitar easy for beginners to learn.

It's coming very soon.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Tune Your Guitar

For anyone new to music and playing the guitar, learning to tune up correctly is definitely a challenge. This is mostly because the ear of a musical novice is quite often undeveloped and still coarse, accurate tuning requires delicacy and a sensitive ear.




Some much emphasis is placed on chords and strumming when you first learn to play guitar but it's all for nothing if your guitar is not properly in tune in the first place right? Even the greatest of players is going to sound bad on an un-tuned guitar.

Over time your ear will develop and you'll get faster and more accurate at tuning your guitar, just don't expect it to happen all at once. The musical ear is one of those things which cannot be forced and each person is going to develop at their own unique speed.

I would strongly suggest you invest in an electronic tuner as this can make things easy is a number of important ways. Firstly you won't have to rely on your 'unreliable' ear, instead you'll get a clear indication from the tuner if the string is in tune or not and what adjustments you need to make to get it in tune. Secondly it will give you the confidence to know that you really are in standard tuning the same as everyone else and that your guitar is properly in tune with all the strings set up correctly.

The real challenge with this method is learning to use the actual guitar tuner properly. You'll need to learn how to recognize if it's telling you the note is sharp or flat and what to do about it. This should take no more that a week to perfect and you'll end up hopefully with a guitar perfectly in tune because of it.

Whatever method you employ whether it be manual or assisted tuning, one thing tuning requires is silence and concentration. It really is a delicate art and you'll need to be calm when you do it. All the adjustments you'll make to the tuning pegs should be very slow, even and tiny. It's very easy to go too far flat or sharp due to over winding. We also always tune up to notes, never down.

If you tune down to notes within a few minutes the string will be out of tune again, it's not secure. Think of it in the same way as winding a clock... always wind up to the correct time, it's more accurate than winding down.

Lastly, even when your guitar tuner is saying everything is in tune the final test is always your ear. With a developed ear you'll find yourself making small adjustments to the tuning even though your guitar tuner is saying everything is perfect. Once that happens you'll really know that you have mastered tuning your guitar.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Two Basic Keys For Guitar Players




Rather than just learning chords at random it's far better to learn them in terms of Keys. We will always get the most value and purchase from the chords we learn when they are put into the context of a complete key.

All songs are set in a certain musical key and there are 12 Major and 12 Minor keys to choose from. To begin however you really just need to learn 2 of those and they actually share quite a few common chords as well.

The key of C consists of C Major, D minor, E minor, F Major, G Major, A minor and B diminished. If you count up you'll see that the key has a total of seven chords and playing the chords through will give you a perfect musical circle. All keys have a total of 7 chords and they will follow the same structure and design.



The second key to learn is G. The chords would be G Major, A minor, B minor, C Major, D Major, E minor and F# diminished. Again by playing through the chords in sequence you'll hear a perfect musical circle.


Now with those 2 keys plus the use of a Capo you'll be able to play a great many songs. You can see how the two keys share common chords and this is why it's much more valuable to learn chords in terms of keys and not just at random. Random won't give you any 'musical power' but keys are the lifeblood of music and songs. Learning them is essential to understanding so many things about playing guitar and music.

You should know them off by heart and once you learn Barre Chords you'll be able to learn more and more. Some people however never learn more than just 3 or 4 keys and this amount of knowledge combined with the use of a Capo will still allow you to play 1000's of songs. The choice is up to you!

You'll notice also that the final chord, number 7, in a key is a diminished chord and they are not used so often in pop songs. It's more of a jazz or classical chord. For more great acoustic guitar lessons be sure to check out Guitar in a Nutshell!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Use Drum Tracks To Really Improve On Guitar

One of the most important tools you can have for getting better on guitar are drum tracks at various different tempos. Ideally what you want is to have the same, identical drum loop but in increments of say 5 - 10 BPM (Beats Per Minute).




With this aid you can push yourself just enough to create a little pressure, with that pressure your improvement rate will sky rocket in comparison to not using anything at all.

Let's take an example... Say you have a chord change of G - C which you find difficult. Using the drum tracks you could begin by practicing the chord change at a rate which was comfortable. Every few minutes increase the drum track to the next highest tempo and gradually push yourself more and more to continue making the chord change in time with the drums.

You'll find a 'sweet spot' where you are challenged but not finding it impossible and this is exactly where you should spend the majority of your practice time. Practicing this way for 10 minutes is worth more that 4 hours of bad practice.

Up to now you may have been used to practicing your chord changes in a relaxed way and giving yourself all the time in the world but that's the slowest way to improve. Without that all important little bit of pressure to push yourself you won't improve at your maximum rate.

After a practice session in this way you'll feel like you've 'really' practiced! It's hard work and challenging but the rewards are massive when you do it consistently day after day over an extended period of time.

Drum tracks are available on the web when you learn acoustic guitar or you could also use a metronome which you can buy from any music store. A metronome will give you just a simple click so it's not as rewarding as a drum track but it's fully adjustable in terms of tempo and it will give you the same result in terms of improvement.

Give it a try and break out of beginner guitar land!