Table Of Contents Become Aware of Who You Are as a Guitar Player 3 Remember Why You Were Supposed to be a Guitar Player in the First Place Stop Comparing Yourself to the Rest of the World 6 Set Realistic Goals 6 Develop a Daily Practice Routine Slow Down and Enjoy The Music 1
The Key to Your Guitar Playing Success Steve S ne Guitar Tuning: Ê Â = E2 = A2 = D3 = G3 = B3 = E E A D G B e Become aware of who you are as a guitar player. Almost all serious guitar players ask the ques on, "What do I need to do to become be er at playing guitar?" We o en hear the answer that we need to take me to prac ce. It is true that we need to prac ce on a daily basis. Let's face it: Prac cing only once a week will not lead to much progress. The hard reality is that even if we want to prac ce as much as we can every day, most people don't have a lot of me to prac ce. We all have our responsibili es and priori es to take care of first as responsible people. If you're one of those people who can only dedicate an hour at most for prac ce every day, perhaps it's me to reorganize the way you're thinking about guitar playing and set decent reasonable goals to achieve success. So, what does success mean as a guitar player? Understand first who you really are as a guitar player and what your goals are. Many students are at war with themselves simply because they think they are not good enough and they can't measure up to their heroes. It's me to stop comparing yourself to somebody else because the reality is that there will always be someone be er than you. Just go to YouTube and you can easily find child guitar prodigies that will blow your head off. So, the point is to stop thinking of compe ng with other people and be the best that you can be as yourself. Ask yourself what kind of things with the guitar are you good at? What kinds of things are you not good at? It will also help you greatly if you can find somebodym that can help you (now, this doesn't mean that it is required you find a teacher). In that way you will have fun with the guitar and you will make great progress. GuitarZoom 21 3
2 Remember why you were supposed to be a guitar player in the first place. Remember why you made the effort to learn how to play the guitar: you want to have fun! It's one of the basics of living out your life to the fullest. You wouldn't want to touch the guitar in the first place if you never wanted to have fun playing it. Don't forget the reason why you should be playing guitar in the first place. You need to be excited about it. Otherwise, you just won't. One of the best ways to have fun with the guitar is that you got to try to learn songs by other people. Pick songs that you enjoy the most and try to learn them on the guitar. If you want to become a great ar st, to learn art would require that you study art done by other ar sts. It's the same thing with music and playing guitar; you need to study other people's music to learn how to create your own. in terms of studying music by other people, we can classify them into two kinds of songs: ego songs and project songs. Ego songs are songs that you enjoy that you can easily learn on the guitar. They don't require much me to prac ce. Learning such songs are instantly gra fying and will build your confidence as a guitar player. Project songs are those works that will take you significant me learning and prac cing before you are able to master them. Here are some excerpts from songs that Steve loves to play: 2 Ex.1 # # E Moderately Fast q = 11 6 # 3 # # A6 # # E 6 1 11 1 11 1 11 1 11 1 11 1 11 GuitarZoom 21
Ex.2 Fast q = 13 A B C A B C # # j j # j Πfull 3 2 2 2 2 Ex.3 Very Fast q = 18 b 1 3 1 3 1 3 6 8 It is important that we become strategic in how we approach learning songs. Not only must you consider learning songs to have fun, you should also choose songs that are also going to benefit by either reinforcing the things that you're already good or improving on the things that you're not so good at therefore giving you the opportunity to prac ce. Here's the deal: when you learn songs, don't always feel obligated to learn them note for note, exactly right because you don't. If you feel strong that you need to learn a song note for note, that's awesome but every song does not have to be a project song (the kind of song that requires a lot of me, effort, and pa ence to learn). Ego songs are the kind of songs you learn that make you feel good. They are not massively me consuming and they are achievable. You may not be able to play them exactly right but you would always feel good about being able to do it. It something that you can con nuously play, and the posi ve reinforcement from it will make you want to keep learning more. GuitarZoom 21
In learning new songs, it is important to know where we need to build skill or improve in general. We o en know that whenever we play a song and it's going well when suddenly, as we approach a par cular measure or sec on, we have difficulty playing it. It is this por on that we need to work on. This is the part where need to spend me and prac ce that. More o en than not, there are two or more por ons of a par cular song (a project song) that will need work. Instead of tackling those problema c sec ons all at once, it's important that we need to focus on one or two problema c sec ons at a me. In this way, you are able to address your problems effec vely. It also helps that you have somebody else who can work with you on those troublesome por ons such as a more experienced player or a guitar teacher. Stop comparing yourself to the rest of the world. You cannot compare yourself to anybody else or the rest of the world and then dog yourself because you're not as good as so and so. You will never get anywhere if you con nue to put yourself down every me you start comparing yourself to your guitar hero or a child prodigy. The important thing is to value who you are right now, focus on what you can actually do with yourself today as a guitar player, and then start working out from there. You can always use that compe ve streak to make yourself be er instead of being bi er. People are always complaining and you cannot concern yourself with all that if you want to become successful. You need to figure out who you are and where you're gonna go from here to try and achieve some of those goals. Set realis c goals. It is important for any guitar player to set realis c, achievable goals. You need to make logical steps to ensure that you will be able to achieve your goals. For instance, you can't learn how to sweep pick immediately if you're s ll learning your open chords because it's a really big jump. While there's always the possibility of learning sweep picking while you're learning open chords, most of the me it will only result in frustra on whenever there are some things that you don't understand or if you're not yet prepared for learning sweep picking. The best thing to do is to go at it step by step, as if building li le bridges one point at a me to go from learning open chords to learning sweep picking. Another example is ego versus project songs. Learning an ego song first before going a er a project song is a realis c goal simply because you are able to successfully learn ego songs faster than working at a project song. You can go at achieving a project by first targe ng a really easy ego song, working for a li le harder ego song a erwards, and then go a er the project song once you become confident with your skills. It is important to know yourself first and what you're capable of to know what an ego song would be for you versus a project song. 6 GuitarZoom 21
Develop a daily prac ce rou ne. Here we are featuring a number of things to prac ce on a daily basis in order to keep yourself in shape for guitar playing and con nuous improvement. First is prac cing your picking hand for downpicking and alternate picking. Steve has a bunch of videos on YouTube as well as the GuitarZoom website that deal with this. Second item on the list for prac cing is developing the strength and dexterity of the four fingers of the fre ng hand. You can use different finger exercises and scales for this. One oldie but goodie finger exercise goes like this. Take note that accuracy is priority over speed when working on such an exercise. It's more about ge ng the feel of it, making sure that your right and le hands are synchronizing properly when working on such exercises. When working against a metronome, use it wisely i.e. set it at a speed where you can accurately perform the exercise rather than working at it too fast. 1 Ex. b b # b # b 6 8 6 8 6 8 6 8 11 # b # b # 6 8 6 8 8 6 8 6 12 b # b # # b # b 8 6 8 6 8 6 8 6 GuitarZoom 21
6 Another thing that guitar players have to consider in prac ce is the theore cal vs. visual approach to understanding the fretboard. A theore cal understanding of the fretboard references music theory concepts such as scales, key signatures, intervals, etc. The visual approach is less theore cal i.e. being able to see things over the fretboard, mostly in terms of shapes and pa erns. For example, Steve plays a Judas Priest-esque sounding chord progression that sound like these: 13 Ex. Fast q = 1 n n Ó 3 1 Ex.6.... #.... 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 1. P.M.. Ó. 8 GuitarZoom 21
1 21 2 Here's a punk-styled chord progression example that could be learned using the visual approach. Ex. Very Fast q = 2 Ex.8 Moderately Fast q = 11 P.M. It's important that we don't only learn things from a theore cal or technical standpoint. We also must start learning by seeing what's actually happening on the fretboard. Memorize various pa erns and concepts on the fretboard because many songs use the same or similar pa erns. If you are far enough in your playing already, go and explore improvisa on, playing musically without basing everything on your understanding and not basing everything on your technical ability. Just use your musicalitymusical ability to create things. Go grab a jam track and experiment. You can even go and jam along your MP3s, CDs, casse e tapes or even your old vinyl albums. Here's an example where Steve is just playing off the top of his head: ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ J # Œ ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ 3 3 3 ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ ÍÍÍÍÍ ÍÍÍÍ w 8 1 12 1 12 13 12 1 12 13 12 13 12 12 13 ÍÍÍÍÍ 1 GuitarZoom 21
8 Slow down and enjoy the music. The last element to obtaining the key to your guitar playing success is to slow down and enjoy the music. Learn how to listen to the music. Appreciate it and get deep with it. Don't just be so concered with the technique required to be able to play the music you are trying to learn. Of course you need technique to pull it off, but you need to learn how to listen to what's actually happening in the music itself. Also learn how to listen to what's been going around you as well. For instance, you can easily go on YouTube and soak up on all sorts of music that has ever existed. For example, you can go and learn solos by the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, whoever it might be and whoever it is that you like out there. More importantly, other than learning all that stuff, go enjoy all of that, relax, and then go on define who you are as a guitar player with those experiences. See what makes sense to you, what doesn't, and then decide what you want to do with all of that. Once you've done all that, you will acquire the key to guitar playing success. 1 GuitarZoom 21
Progress Tracker The Key To Guitar Playing Success Become Aware of Who You Are as a Guitar Player Remember Why You Were Supposed to be a Guitar Player in the First Place Stop Comparing Yourself to the Rest of the World Set Realistic Goals Develop a Daily Practice Routine Slow Down and Enjoy The Music Date GuitarZoom 21 11