Top Three Ways To Improve Your Guitar Playing

May 8, 2008

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Top Three Ways To Improve Your Guitar Playing
By Mike P Hayes Platinum Quality Author

Want to improve your guitar playing? Here is the top three ways to improve your guitar playing! These tips will cut through all the "fluff" and get to the "real stuff".

Tip 1: Time is all you got! Use it wisely.

Write your number one musical goal down on a piece of paper and sticky tape this page over the power switch of the TV (or you can sticky tape this page over the TV or computer screen).

What, did he say? Yes, you read that correctly … turn the TV (or computer) off. Seriously, almost everyone has heard about writing their goals down, but how many people have actually taken the time to write their goals down?

All successful people have the a crystal clear picture of their goals, writing their goals down gives them clarity and focus.

When you tape your goal sheet over the TV screen it serves as a visual reminder of what you want to achieve and asks the all important question … are you prepared to "pay the price?"

It’s true everything in life has a price … there’s a price to pay for wanting to change things in your life and there’s a price to pay to for doing nothing. The really great thing is you get to choose.

Why is this "sticking tape on the TV" routine in the top ten ways to improve your guitar playing? Now, if you are honest with yourself, I’m sure there’s a couple of extra practice hours available if we were more selective with our TV viewing.

Perhaps "surfing the net" is your thing, have you ever made a note of how many hours you have spent on the net looking for guitar playing "short cuts".

How does a guitarist get really good? The answer is simple practice, practice, practice … that’s the only thing what will make you a good guitarist. There’s no other way!

Track your TV or internet surfing time for a week and see if you can invest extra time into actual guitar practice.

Tip 2: Learn melodies. what is a melody?

A simple way to introduce you to the concept of a melody is to think of a song, let’s say … "Happy Birthday" can you hear the tune for Happy Birthday playing in your head? What you are hearing is the melody, it’s the tune you whistle or hum.

Music consists of three main elements: rhythm (the beat), melody (the tune) and harmony (the chords).

Learning melodies is definitely in our top ten ways to improve your guitar playing list. There’s so much emphasis placed on learning scales and playing fast all over the guitar like a "bee in a bottle".

Even though there are many more people playing the guitar than ever before only an extremely small number of guitarist’s can play a recognizable melody on the guitar.

Make a sort list of five songs you want to learn the melody of, try to play these melodies "by ear" if you can read standard music notation learn to play the melody from the sheet music and then close the page and play the melody from memory!

Tip 3: Tap your foot … develop your groove!

Seems simple enough, however it’s rare for a beginner guitarist to tap their foot.

In it’s most basic description music could be defined as : "pitch in time".

Whilst there are obviously many other elements that contribute to the emotional experience of listening to a piece of music, "pitch in time" is a good description of the basics.

Remember it’s "pitch IN time", it is common practice to learn guitar via TAB, which is where we encounter our first major stumbling block.

TAB only notates pitch, the guitarist is left to figure out the "time" aspect by playing along with a song on a CD or mp3 etc.

This ‘monkey-see-,monkey-do" approach fails to develop the most basic element of music, namely, rhythm (the beat) consequently it has become increasingly more difficult to get two guitarist’s to play together in time because they have never developed the concept of tapping their foot (and listening to each other).

When you tap your foot, you feel the music internally, when musicians play together their has to be an common time feel and tempo. Regardless of any other skills you learn on the guitar, if you neglect to develop your groove, nothing will even work … it’s as simple as that!

To be a good guitarist takes practice patience and perseverance, over time your dedication will pay off, it all starts with setting goals you want to achieve and using your time wisely, learning melodies and developing your groove.

That’s my top three tips to improve your guitar playing, check them out and you will experience immediate results.

Mike Hayes develops systems and products to help you succeed in your guitar playing. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular free ecourse, available at: => http://www.guitarcoaching.com