Transcribing: Jamming the Key

So, as I promised, this series is going to help you when you want to tab stuff out. One of the easiest ways to start is to simply “jam” over the song as a backing track. Sounds kinda simple for something that’s supposed to be so difficult, right? First, read the pages on the major [...]

May 26, 2011 at 2:00 pm | Developing Your Ears, How to | No comments

Metal Rhythm Guitar: Pinch Harmonics

Firstly, if you don’t know what a pinch harmonic is, watch this awesome example: Wanna know how to get the guitar to squeal like that? Those are “Pinch Harmonics”. Playing Harmonics A while ago I did this video for bass, which explains where the natural harmonics live on the strings (and what notes they are). [...]

May 24, 2011 at 2:43 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises, Rhythm Guitar | No comments

Practice Schedule (part 2)

Following on from last week’s post, today I’m going to be finishing off what I was telling you about how you can create a personalised practise routine just for you. We’ll start where we left off, with the third section of the routine (please read the previous post for the first part of this article). [...]

May 20, 2011 at 8:00 am | Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments

Why Transcribe?

Well, this might seem obvious to you: you want to transcribe because you want to “figure out” the guitar tab for a certain song, right? Of course, that’s only after you’ve checked google (or your favourite tab site) for someone else’s work (which has the potential to be wildly inaccurate, sound nothing like the original [...]

May 19, 2011 at 2:00 pm | Developing Your Ears | No comments

Rhythm Guitar: Strumming

So you know how to strum, right? Well, do you? Do you ever find that your strumming hand gets “out of time” or certain rhythms just feel awkward to play? It might just be that your strumming technique needs working on… I have talked about the importance of the strumming hand before, and how important [...]

May 17, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Exercises, Guitar Technique and Exercises, Rhythm Guitar | No comments

Practice Schedule

So, over the last week you should have created a list of things to practice (and if you haven’t read last weeks post, I suggest you read that first). This week we’ll be doing the complicated bit: putting together a personalised practice routine just for you. I know some practise routines that you find on [...]

May 13, 2011 at 8:00 am | Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments

How to Transcribe

Have you ever been in the situation where you’re scouring the Internet for a guitar tab- an accurate guitar tab- of one of your favourite songs only to be unable to find it? It sometimes seems like some of the best songs are either not tabbed out at all, or -maybe even worse- the only [...]

May 12, 2011 at 6:00 pm | Developing Your Ears | No comments

What Should I Practice?

In the previous post in the series, I outlined how to not just blindly follow a set practice routine, but to create your own unique routine based on your specific goals. It’s really no good just saying “I’m going to practice alternate picking for 6 hours a day, because that’s what I heard John Petrucci/Steve [...]

May 6, 2011 at 8:00 am | Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments

How to Practice Effectively

I recently realised that, although I’ve talked a lot about practice routine, I haven’t actually given you a chart or set routine to follow. The difficulty is that you are a unique musician- every musician is unique, and so everyone will require a slightly different practice routine. Your personalised routine will depend on where you [...]

April 29, 2011 at 8:00 am | Practicing and Practice Routine | 1 comment

Rock Rhythm Guitar: Pushing the Beat

What on earth am I talking about? Have you ever heard anyone talk about “pushing and pulling the beat”? I kinda touched on this one on the post about swing. Conventional wisdom tells us that you’re either playing “in time”, or “out of time”- but it’s actually slightly more complicated than that. You can play [...]

April 19, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Chords, Music Theory, Rhythm Guitar | No comments

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