The Guitar

Guitar players?

I’ve been playing guitar for about 2 months now. I feel good about playing and what I’m teaching myself, but would like advice. I just saw Phil Keagy (best guitarist in the world…literally) this past weekend. While I was watching him play, I just can’t seem to understand how his fingers fly around like they have a mind of their own.

There are a ton of different ways to get better. I know everyone already says to “practice”, but it’s the truth. You might be stuck though on what to practice. It’s very easy to get stuck in a groove where you practice playing all the stuff you already know. Here’s how I’ve gotten a lot better in the last few years. I have been a lot more technical about how I practice every day. There are a few key areas you can work on to improve your guitar playing.

Technique – If you get a DVD of Phil Keagy or any good guitar player you’ll start to notice some of their physical techniques. If you look at their strum / pick hand you’ll notice that only the wrist and fingers move and not the entire arm. This is important. The only way you are going to strum 8th and 16th beats is by learning to use your wrist to strum. The bottom of my hand, by the wrist, is almost always planted on or right above the bridge, this allows me to use my wrist to strum or to plant my hand down to pick single strings. You always want to have an anchor that you can work off of.

Timing – Timing is crucial in music. When you hear a beginner play a song and you hear an advanced player play a song, one of the biggest things you’ll notice is the difference in timing. Advanced players know that time is a precise art. When an advanced player taps his foot on the ground, the foot is tapping the same way every time, it’s agressive to the ground and exactly on beat, now you can still tap your foot agressively to different tempos, but you are tapping out the quarter or eighth notes right on time. Bring out a Metronome and work with it daily. Start to recognize that when you are playing songs, that each note is meant for a precise time, and by perfect this timing, you will get a much cleaner sound.

Tone – This is part of technique again, but with your fret hand. Make sure that all of your notes sound solid and you don’t have any extra noises that are not suppose to be there. Just critisize yourself on how good it sounds. By paying attention to where your fingers line up on the frets and by listening for any unwaned noises.

Theory – Take some time to learn some theory. This will help you understand the formulas behind songs and how to create your own. Scales are the foundation of music, once you learn scales, you can begin to undertsand chord chemistry, progressions, etc. There are thousands of websites that offer scale charts and whatnot.

I try and break my time up when practicing. I’ll spend an hour on technique and tone. Then spend 30 minutes on timing and 30 minutes on theory. But I also just play freely and see what happnens or work on specific songs and whatnot. Obviously getting a teacher would help you out tremendously, but if you critique yourself enough and make an effort you can turn yourself into a great guitar player. Good luck.

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