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Guitar Tips

Can Listening to Music Improve Performance Skill?

May 17, 2017 admin

In 1968, Duane Allman learned to play the slide guitar. Using a glass pill bottle as a makeshift slide, he listened and played along with Taj Mahal’s track “Statesboro Blues.” Many would say the new bluesy sound solidified the Allman Brothers as one of the leading bands of the era. All musicians listen to the music that inspires them. So, it’s hard to define exactly the extent to which listening to music impacts a person’s ability to play or improve their playing skills. However, if we look to Duane Allman as an example, we can understand the influence new sounds have on musicians.

Musicians Listen to Music with a Critical Ear

When you ask a non-musician what they think of a certain song, they will likely quote lyrics. A musician, however, will probably mention some nuance of a bass line, or how the fundamental changes mid-measure in the last two beats of the 4th bar chord. This is because real musicians listen for and hear these things first before they pick up on the catchy lyrics.

What Musicians Listen For

Musician and writer, Andy Lemaire suggests that you should connect with the pulse of the music, move or tap out the rhythm. Change the track do the same. Get to the point where you instinctively lock into the rhythm immediately, regardless of the tempo. Once you have mastered rhythm, listen to the beats and how they are fractured or divided. Do you hear a swing or shuffle or is the beat straight? You can learn a lot about the way songs are structured. If you are interested in playing blues, listen to the progressions.

When you can hear the beginning and end, listen for how it repeats. Finally, see if you can anticipate chord changes. These skills can be beneficial in improving your playing abilities and can be accomplished just by listening to the type of music you want to play.

Tips to Help You Improve Your Playing Skills While Listening to Music

Playing with a live musician or with a group of musicians is the ideal situation, but there are alternatives that can be as beneficial. Apps like EZ Drummer, Garageband loops, can give you the beat while you hone your performance skills. Alternatively, use apps like Spotify to jam with your favourite songs. Try playing along note-for-note as you hear it or try executing nuances and improvisation.

A great tip is to play songs outside of your comfort zone to gain more benefits from the experience. Record yourself and listen back with the same critical ear. This is the only way to know the areas you need to improve and the ones you have mastered.

Guitar Tips, How-To

Helping Your Child Pick Their First Guitar

April 26, 2017 admin

Learning to play a musical instrument as a child is thought to make you better at math, according to many music teachers. A strange concept at first, but considering the fact that scales and rhythms are fundamentally based on fractions makes it a little clearer. In fact, it also improves a child’s coordination, patience and, amongst other benefits, gives them something cool to talk about when breaking the ice in social situations.

Cool Chords

Owing to its status as the icon of rock stars and cool kids the world over, coupled with the wide variety of musical styles played on it, the guitar is often the instrument children want to play. Allowing them to play the instrument of their desires is a crucial step in their musical development; there is little to no value in forcing a child to learn violin if that is not what they want to play. If your child wants to play an instrument, if they grab for it even when it’s not time to practice, then you know they will go far with it. To this end, choosing a popular instrument like guitar is a common sense move to make. The fact that almost any song can be adapted to play well on six strings is a huge boon; no matter what they enjoy listening to, it can find a home on the fretboard. Consider also that most songs need only the same three or four chords, and instant results will surely encourage further practice.

Guitar Shopping

Of course, one major hurdle needs to be jumped before music is even considered; buying the guitar itself! There is a lot of variation between instruments and a lot of parameters need to be taken into account when choosing a guitar for your child. Major considerations include size, action and strings, not to mention brands, body shapes and, in the case of electric guitars, pickups.

When buying for children as opposed to yourself, choosing a guitar takes on a whole new form. For most adults, guitar size is not really an issue, but for eight-year-old hands it makes a big difference. Nobody over eighteen should have any trouble holding down a string for a while, but for a child yet to build up their full strength, lighter strings might be needed. If details such as these aren’t given serious thought, your musician in the making won’t be able to play the guitar at all, much less enjoy it. A little research will go a long way in ensuring there are no tears during the buying process.

Guitar Tips

The Essential Guitar Chords Chart

August 19, 2016 admin

This post is part of a wider collection of articles, which will be published on the Pro Music Tutor blog in the coming weeks. This series is based on the excellent collection of educational blogs available at MusicianTuts.com. Pro Music Tutor would like to thank Cody at Musician Tuts for allowing us to collaborate with him and to use his work as the basis for this series.

All images used in this post are courtesy of Musician Tuts.

The Essential Guitar Chords Chart

Having looked at the basics of what a guitar chord is and then moving onto look specifically at barre chords, we’re going to move onto looking at a useful guitar chords chart.

While there is a huge number of guitar chords that you might want to play, and that we’re sure you’ll learn as you move on your journey of learning and improving your guitar playing, at this stage we’re focusing specifically on chords that beginner guitarists and intermediate guitarists will be commonly looking to practice.

This is a great guitar chords chart to call upon for learning new songs as well as for composing your own.

With the last section at the bottom – moveable barre chords – you can use these finger positions to play a range of chords depending on your choice of root note.

The root note of the first row of moveable barre chords is defined by the low E string. For example, if you were to take the first example (Major) and use those finger positions starting from the 5th fret, you would get an A major. This is because the 5th fret of the low E string is an A note, and therefore the root note of this chord.

The diagram below is an outline of all the notes for each string within the first 12 frets of a guitar. Once you know how to play each note, it will open up a whole range of possibilities for scales, arpeggios, and other great sounds.

To help explain the image above a little further, the notes in green on the far left are the open string notes. Each column corresponds to a fret on the guitar and each note is different all the way up until the 12th fret where everything begins to repeat again. This is an important lesson to remember. The notes on the 12th fret are the same as the open string notes, only they are 1 octave higher. This means that after the 12th fret, the notes repeat themselves, only they are all an octave higher. For example, the notes on fret 1 are the same as fret 13, the notes on fret 2 are the same as fret 14, and so on.

In the next post we will move onto looking at chord progression.

Check out the original Beginner Guitar Chords post at Musician Tuts.

Guitar Tips

Playing Barre Chords

August 12, 2016 admin

All images used in this post are courtesy of Musician Tuts.

Playing Barre Chords

Barre chords are versatile chords that, despite being slightly more difficult to play than standard chords, particularly for beginners, are useful for giving you options for playing new sounds or creating more advanced jam tracks yourself.

Why are They Called Barre Chords?

Barre chords are named because when you play them, you will usually be using your index finger to press down on all six strings on your guitar. This is known as a full barre. Alternatively, when you use the index finger to press down 2 – 5 strings, this is known as a half barre.

Finger Exercises for Playing Barre Chords

The strain on your fingers will be noticeable when you first start playing and experimenting with barre chords. Don’t worry, even if your fingers feel particularly painful. This is natural and will continue to occur while you get used to playing barre chords.

Thankfully there are some great exercises you can use that will help you strengthen your fingers, enabling you to play barre chords more comfortably but also helping with your overall guitar playing.

One exercise we’ve found useful – and one that our guitar tutors recommend – is push down the top two strings on the fifth fret, and play these strings until the sound is clear. Once you can do this comfortably, move on and repeat with your finger pushing down three strings, then four, five, and finally six for the full barre chord.

You’ll get the most out of this exercise by only moving on to pushing down an extra string once you can play the number you’re currently pushing down easily, and getting the right sound from your instrument. Repeat this exercise over the coming days and weeks, and gradually you will feel your fingers become stronger and be more comfortable at playing barre chords.

A Major Barre Chord

The below diagram highlights an A major barre chord.

As you can see from the diagram, to play this chord you need to push down all six strings on the fifth fret with your index finger – which should come easily if you’ve followed the previously suggested exercise – then create the E major shape with your second, third, and fourth fingers.

When you first start playing this barre chord, use it as an additional finger strengthening exercise. If you want to get hardcore with strengthening your fingers, check out this product on the Amazon website. A finger exercising tool can be used when you have any spare time without your guitar around, and while it may seem a little extreme to a beginner, we promise you’ll notice the difference after a short time using it.

Ensure you don’t just use the finger exercising tool if you do buy one; you should still practice playing the actual chords so you get used to playing them. Ideally, do both in conjunction to enjoy the maximum benefit.

If this article has whet your appetite for playing barre chords, check out these additional resources from Premier Guitar and Guitar Noise.

The next post in this series will move onto looking at guitar chord charts.

Check out the original Beginner Guitar Chords post at Musician Tuts.

Guitar Tips

What is a Guitar Chord?

July 28, 2016 admin

All images used in this post are courtesy of Musician Tuts.

What is a Guitar Chord?

Chords are the basis of so many songs and individual riffs. Some bands, most notably British rock legends Status Quo, manage to make a career and become a global success using just a handful of chords.

Playing simple chords is also one of the first things you’ll look at when learning to play guitar. But what are guitar chords?

Defining Guitar Chords

According to the Wikipedia definition:

“In music, a guitar chord is a set of notes played on a guitar. A chord’s notes are often played simultaneously, but they can be played sequentially in an arpeggio. The implementation of guitar chords depends on the guitar tuning.”

Read Wikipedia’s full resource on guitar chords here.

Wikipedia’s summary is technically correct, yet is very basic.

To expand on this, a guitar chord comprises three (or more) notes played together at the same time.

The C chord, as one example, is made up of the notes C, E, and G.

In the above image, your third finger would be creating the C note, and the second finger the E note. The G note comes from the open note you play on the fourth string.

Why is it Called the C Chord?

This is called the C chord due to the C note being the lowest note in the chord.

To help us look at chords in more detail we’re going to look at how these are made. Sticking with the C chord, look at the visual of the C Major scale below.

Starting from the C note on the third fret, the scale goes: C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C.

We play chords such as C Major by taking the first scale note – you may have seen this called or call this the root note – skipping the next, taking the next, skipping the next, and taking the next. Therefore, within the C Major scale, the C chord takes the notes in bold (C, E, G): C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C.

You can use this “use one, skip one” method beginning at any note within the scale to form chords. So, if you start at the D note within the C Major scale you will get: C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C which is a D Minor (D, F, A).

The visual of the D Minor chord is below for your reference and understanding.