One of the most important skills you can develop as a musician is a “good ear”. The ability to match pitch and audiate on the guitar is fundamentally important in all aspects of your playing. Developing your ear will make your improvisation more creative and melodic, as well as improve your composition and make learning and accurately playing any piece of music easier. While some musicians are lucky enough to be born with perfect pitch, …
HX Stomp Review – Guitar Gear Gift Ideas
As Thanksgiving and Black Friday approach, we’re all getting ready for our holiday gear shopping, whether for ourselves or the guitarist in your life. If you’re like me, you do most of this shopping online. At this point in my guitar playing career, I really don’t feel the need to go to a big chain music store and listen to some kid (who let’s face it, doesn’t know as much as I do) demo and …
What You Should Look for in a Guitar App
What Should You Look for in a Guitar App? Using apps is one of the ways beginners can learn to play acoustic, electric or bass guitar. It’s convenient and allows you to practice and review lessons even when you’re on the go and even when you don’t have your beginner electric guitar around (here’s a good spot to find one). But with the number of guitar apps out there, how do you know which one …
Picking Exercises, Guitar Practice, Shred Guitar and Live Gear
Guitarists have been emailing me… asking where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. The short answer is, practicing. Practicing a lot. While my writing has a suffered a bit, my guitar chops are making a serious comeback. Most of my friends, family and readers know I do a ton of acoustic guitar gigs. I’m still doing 4-5 per week. Thats just how I pay the bills here! Recently I got the call to …
10 Ways To Get Your Kids To Appreciate Good Music
Getting your kids to appreciate good music can start as early as in the womb. Many parents-to-be report excited kicks coming from their tummy when singing to their unborn babies or playing good music. Music can bring great joy and speak to the soul – not only that, it has many benefits that can seriously improve quality of life. Music increases brain power and memory, gives kids a form of artistic expression, improves creativity, can …
20 Essential Guitar Chords for Beginners
If you’re new to playing the guitar and wondering what chords are suitable for a beginner guitarist, look no further. I’ve got you covered in this lesson… and then some. You’ll find no shortage of downloadable guitar chord charts and graphs flying around the internet, so what makes this one different? After some 25+ years of teaching guitar lessons, I’ve found that the right mix of open position shapes and a little music theory goes …
Top 5 Beginner Guitar Tips
Learning to play a musical instrument helps to boost your confidence. A guitar is one such musical instrument that automatically ups your cool quotient and keeps you, as well as the people around you entertained. Playing the guitar is a great way to unwind at the end of the day. It can also help you align your focus if you find yourself stressed with study or work. Key to becoming a proficient guitarist is to …
The 7 Day Practice Routine For Guitarists Book Sale
View PostGame of Thrones Series Finale – How it Could Have ended
Sunday night’s Game of Thrones Series finale left millions of fans gasping a collective “what the actual F$*K?”… this fan included. I’m not ready to sign a petition for a Game of Thrones Season 8 do-over like many millions of fans have today, yet I can’t escape the feeling that the entire episode, perhaps even the entire season was half-baked. I’m not alone. Every news outlet from The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Washington …
The Modern Ways Musicians Are Grabbing Attention
Becoming a musician isn’t what it used to be. Thanks to the power of digital tools, practically anyone can create music, upload it, and start selling it. But this has created a problem: there were something like 80,000 new albums released last year, 99 percent of which will never get played on the radio, and even fewer of them will make it onto the playlist of the average person. Musicians, like companies, have to stand …