Sunday, 16 May, 2010 16:18 Written by Joshua
So, which guitar is the best for a new guitarist just starting out? Well, it really just depends on what kind of music you want to play. If you don’t know what type of guitar that you want to play on then you should ask yourself what kind of music you want to play. A good way to figure this out is to simply pick a song that you like for its guitar sound.
Listen to only the guitar sounds in the song. What type of sounds are they? Clean and soft sounds or harsh heavy and distorted. Typically the acoustic guitars sounds are going to be the cleaner softer sounds and the electric guitars sounds are going to be heavier and distorted because they are plugged into amplifiers and effects units. Are you able to hear individual notes being picked or are the strings being strummed hard? The harder you strum the guitar the thicker your strings have to be. You need to know what style you want to play in order to decide what type a guitar will help you achieve that style.
Monday, 26 April, 2010 18:23 Written by Joshua
Recording Your Practice Sessions[adsense_id="2"]I have found with some of my students that the number one obstacle to learn how to play guitar is motivation.You begin to learn to play but it just seems too difficult and it doesn’t seem like you are ever going to get any better and your fingers hurt and your hands are cramping up and it is just not much fun to play. A couple of methods that I have always used to keep myself and my students motivated when practicing can also be applied to your practice times. Motivation is the key to success when learning to play guitar.
First of all, I have always found it beneficial to record practice times. You can get a simple tape player from the store and just hit the record button before you start playing. This does a couple of things for you. It allows you to listen to yourself and see what you really sound like and pick out the parts that you need to work on.It also allows you to track your progress and become more and more confident as you play. Sometimes you may think that you are stuck and you aren’t really making any progress when that is not really true. It is hard to see how far you have progressed sometimes when you cannot hear the difference for yourself. So get a tape recorder, or there are several other methods for recording such as plugging into your computer. But make sure you record one practice session every few weeks and go back to check your progress between the two recordings.This will keep you going back for more lessons and it will encourage you to practice more because you will be able to see the difference that working on something over time can make on your skill level and track your progress.
