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I'm sure you've heard musicians talk about playing by ear and not by theory. Music theory seems to be undervalued in this statement.
Music theory helps you understand and grasp what's going on behind the melody. Pop artists can churn out dozens of songs by just learning the I IV V pattern. Learning theory, however, will give you a deeper insight into music.
In today’s article, we’re going to talk about how to start improvising, right now, here today.
Even if you are doing guitar lessons at the moment, this can still be a fun exercise.
The first two things I’m going to explain to you.
The difference between consonance and dissonance pitches.
So let’s start by talking about consonance, what is a consonance?
Consonance is any of the three notes that make up a chord.
Let’s take G major for an example, the notes that make up that chord would be G, B and D.
Those notes would be the notes you would want to start and end your phrase.
Now let’s talk about dissonance.
There are two types of dissonance, there the notes that are in the key and then there are the notes that are completely out the key.
So now we’ve talked consonance and dissonance, let’s get started on the actual playing part!
Let’s pick a key that we’re going to improvise in, let’s choose G major.
Next, let’s pick a scale to use over this key, let’s use the major scale, now we have our scale picked out let’s figure out what the chord progression is going to be.
The chords we’re going to improvise over going to be G major and D major next, let’s figure out which notes make these chords.
G major consists of G B and D and D major consist of D A and F#.
Now what I want you to do is write down these notes on a piece of paper so you have something to reference to. This will make the process of improvising allot easier, now let’s figure out how many times each chord is played.
We will just do 4/4, meaning each chord will be played 4 times for 4 measures, here is an example of this chord progression.
What I want you to do now is play this chord progression and record yourself either on a loop pedal or use your phone and let this progression be on a loop.
A loop is basically something that keeps on repeating itself.
So now we have our scale ready, we know what chords we’re going to play over and we know the notes in those chords.
Now it’s time to find what notes we’re going to start our solo with and end with.
What this means your going to pick a note out of the G major chord to start the solo with once the loop begins. Then pick either the same note or a different note in that chord.
So after when D major is getting ready to change back to G major, you’ll know exactly which note you will need to land on, here are a couple more things you can do if you still find yourself stumbling.
One is let the track loop a couple of time so you can know where the changes are, so you know when you need to be back to one of the notes you picked out.
Also here is one other thing you could do is get a piece of fretboard paper and plot your start and ending notes.
Notice how my first note is G and my last note is both of those notes are in the G major chord.
So this concludes this article, if you take the things we talk about today, I guarantee the process of improvisation will start will come a lot easier to you.
About the author, Zach Payton is a teacher out of Lewiston Idaho, that likes help his students reach their full potential as musicians.
A common question I get asked by parents is “which kind of guitar is best to start learning on?” to which I reply “what are you trying to learn?”
There is a common misconception that beginner guitarists need to learn on an acoustic guitar and work their way up to electric.
I am not quite sure how this myth has perpetuated but have a feeling it has something to do with the higher investment cost of beginning on an electric guitar and children’s tendencies to give up on activities on a whim. Starting on a cheap acoustic and getting rewarded with a nice new electric guitar and amplifier for Christmas (if the child is still committed) is often viewed as much safer bet than going all out in the beginning and risking they quit three months later. The truth is learning on an electric guitar is actually physically easier than learning on an acoustic guitar and has a lot less limitation, but hold up!
Before you rush off to buy an electric guitar. Let's go back to my earlier question.
Most new students decide that they want to learn how to play guitar and don’t have any goals beyond that. Some thought should go into what kind of songs and styles you would like to play as well as setting yourself goals to work towards. This will give you a much clearer understanding of which guitar you should be buying and give you a clear path to follow for your lessons.
After all, If all you listen to is heavy metal and your goal is to shred up a storm and play Eruption by Van Halen then an acoustic guitar probably isn’t going to be relevant to what you’re trying to do. Likewise you’re into folk music and all you want to play is a few chords while singing then the whole realm of electric guitar lead playing is a tangent best avoided.
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If you’re serious about learning guitar and have ambitions of playing live, creating your own music or playing songs from a wide diversity of genres chances are you’re going to need both an electric and an acoustic. It then becomes a point of which one do you get first.
As stated before electric guitars are easier to play and allow you to dive right into lead guitar playing. You can play acoustic guitar songs on an electric but can be harder to do electric guitar songs and techniques on an acoustic, especially if you can’t reach the upper frets. The downside to electric guitars is they are often more expensive and limited to adult size (not all brands do ½ and ¾ size instruments for children) whereas entry level acoustics in all shapes and sizes are abundant.
My advice here is to set yourself a budget and get the best instrument you can afford within the price range because if you buy a cheap guitar now it’s ‘$100 less you have to upgrade later on.
So if you’re looking to by your first guitar and are tossing up between getting an electric or an acoustic I’d highly recommend asking yourself “what am I trying to learn?” The answer should provide you with an idea of what songs, genres and techniques you will need ot learn and steer you towards buying the right tool for the job.
About The Author
Michael is a professional musician and guitar teacher from Melbourne, Australia. He owns more guitars than he has time to play and loves helping others make the right choice when buying a new instrument. If you need Melbourne Guitar Lessons Michael will help you take your playing to the next level.
I know this is perhaps a corny analogy, but remember in the movie Caddyshack where Chevy Chase advises “be the ball” as a strategy to improve his young friend’s golf game? Well, transcribing, the art and science of translating music you hear into music you play, allows you, like no other practice, to “be the music.” You sit with a piece of music you love; you really get inside it; you write it down; you play it; you become it.
Where else can you have such an amazing experience? You can view the Grand Canyon, for example, but can you really become it?
If I may generalize, musicians who are learning their craft don’t necessarily transcribe as much as they used to because in the past there was no YouTube or Ultimate Guitar Tab websites. There was only you, the album, and your instrument. The process of transcribing was slow, it was painstaking, and it was messy, but the practice really helps you grow as a musician. It helps develop your ear; it develops your fretboard knowledge; it helps your music theory; it builds harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary.
The most common type of musical content to transcribe is a melody or an improvised solo. If you are new to this practice, just sit with a simple melody of a pop song you like. You don’t necessarily need to write down the notes, you can go straight to your instrument (and it’s still considered transcribing even when nothing is written), but it’s always better to write it so you can remember it later.
Some tips are:
a. Select only a very short section. Only do 1 phrase at a time. If it’s the Beatles “Yesterday,” for example, only do the first word. That should be easy enough, right? Only then should you move on to “all my troubles seemed so far away.”
b. Determine what key the piece is in. For pop music, it’s almost always the very last note of the song or at least the point of resolution at the end of each chorus. From there, if you can determine whether the song is major (happy, bright) or minor (somber, dark), it’ll help you find the appropriate scale that the song tends to use.
c. Hunt and peck. If you can’t tell what key the song is in, or you don’t recognize the underlying scale (or can’t play the scale yet), just simply hunt and peck. It may feel like you’re blind in a dark alley, but the process helps you identify whether pitches are higher or lower, and where they might be on your instrument..
d. Write down the notes in standard notation or tablature, or just the letter names if necessary. Don’t worry about the best fingering to use until later. Just do it on one string if you have to just to get the sounds down on paper. The decisions about fingerings come later.
In many cases, it’s easier to understand how a melody works if you know the underlying harmonic base. So you might consider transcribing a pop song’s chord progression even before you decipher it’s melody. Some tips are:
If you can determine what the bassist plays on the first beat of each new chord, it will almost always be the root of the chord. Do the whole progression with just the root notes first. So in our example of “Yesterday,” you would have written down f, e, a, and d for the first 4 chords.
Occasionally you may find half-diminished or diminished chords, but for the most part pop songs will be major, minor, or 7th. In “Yesterday” the first chord is F major and the second is Em. If you’re not sure, simply try each one when that chord comes around and decide which one fits best. If none of them fit perfectly, just pick the closest one and move on. It might not all be transcribed perfectly first go-around, but don’t let that stop you from finishing at least a section. Sometimes you can better figure out how to change the chord you’re not happy with only after you can play the whole section.
It’ll only take a few minutes for the teacher to see if you’ve done it correctly, and that type of feedback helps you massively and arms you for continuing the process.
Nowadays there are so many great ways to help the process of transcribing. You can slow down Youtube videos (see my article on “How to Best Use Technology while Practicing”). You can isolate a certain phrase using computer audio software and make a loop of it so you can hear it over and over. You can even slow down the audio and keep the key the same!
Transcribing doesn’t necessarily have to be from a recording, it can be playing a song from memory. Not to be funny, but can you play Happy Birthday” on your instrument without sheet music? This is more about ear training than transcribing, but it is relevant because it’s important to practice ear training. As your ear develops, you recognize the individual characteristic of each of the 12 intervals, and it makes transcribing so much easier. The importance of ear training can (and probably will be) a whole separate article, but suffice it to say get your hands on some kind of ear training program and it’ll save you hours of hard work and give you massive musical enjoyment in the long-run.
Transcribing is not always easy, but it really makes you grow as a musician. As I mentioned, start with easy material first. Don’t give up. Hunt and peck if you must. Work out the fingerings later. What you digest from transcribing will show up in your improvising, songwriting, and your sense of melody and rhythm. Have fun and remember “be the ball.”
About the author: Dennis Winge is a professional guitarist living in New York with a passion for vegan food and bhakti yoga. If you are interested in taking Guitar Lessons in Newfield, NY, then be sure to contact Dennis!
You've got how to play a simple vibrato, and actually, it sounds pretty good. But you want to take it further. How can you make this key phrasing element even more interesting? And make it the best it can be.
The most common combination with vibrato is to do a whole tone bend first. Use that as your base note, then vibrato from that bend.
You can also add vibratos to your legatos as well. This is good practice for strengthening your individual fingers. And also make the vibrato sound more fluent from your transition note.
This sounds so cool and very doable. You need strength in all your fingers so that you can move them together without any of them giving way.
Practise your vibratos with individual fingers. Making sure you work on your weaker ones more to build up strength. So that each note in your chord vibratos sounds consistent.
Is it a sharp or flat?
You may be bending your vibrato from in key to out of key by a semi-tone, or starting from the fret below and bending it to the key. Which would be flattening the note.
Too much of a good thing will diminish how awesome your vibratos. Use it when you want to create that specific feeling in your solo.
Making sure you are using the right type of vibrato for your improvisation
Try mimicking vocal singers or saxophone players for your vibratos. Listen to how they phrase your singing, and try to mimic it in your lead playing.
Saxophone players also have wonderful phrasing that you can use to inspire your guitar playing.
Record your vibrato, make sure it's as good as you think it sounds. Then play your vibratos in front of people. Constantly improve it, so you get jaw-dropping faces in front of you. Girls screaming your name. (Or boys.) I've been to John Mayer concerts. The effect of a great vibrato is outstanding.
You want to be confident and be in control when you execute it every time. So you have consistency. No winging it. You want to be able to create what's in your head onto the guitar every. single. time.
If you need more help with your phrasing elements or with anything else with your electric guitar playing. Come contact us, we can do an introductory lesson to find out more about you and how we can come up with a program to help you.
If you are wanting to either enjoy the guitar when you learn to play it rather than feel lost and frustrated or you are wanting to make some massive progress on the guitar. Then getting a great guitar teacher that right for you is an important first step. Not all guitar teachers are the same, nor are they necessarily right for you, so let’s see what some of the things you can do to help ensure you get a great teacher that suits your needs and goals.
Is there a particular style of music you are wanting to play? Are there any guitarists that you would love to play like? What are you wanting to achieve from your guitar playing? These are questions to ask yourself when you look for someone to teach you guitar. You want a guitar teacher who will be able to help you achieve what you are after. Typically, if you are after a certain style of playing. You want a guitar teacher will be able to provide that specific style. They will be able to help you progress faster along that route. So if you want a guitar teacher who teachers rock, then get a guitar teacher who is accomplished at teaching rock. Likewise, if you are a beginner, find a guitar teacher who has lots of experience teaching beginner guitarists as well.
This is a factor that plays into most people’s minds when they look at guitar lessons, and it is an important factor. You have to think of the lessons both as an investment and also the lessons are there to help you get something out of it. Now cheaper lessons may seem cheaper, but you will probably get less out of it as it’s taught by a less experienced teacher. Whereas an experienced guitar teacher may be able to achieve the same results in a quarter of the time. Even though the prices may seem higher for a more experienced teacher, you get what you pay for. So don’t just get the cheapest lessons you can find, that will definitely end up wasting your time and money in the long run.
What are your first impressions? Does this teacher seem confident in his teachings? Do you trust what he/she has to say? DO you think you will do what he/she tells you to do?
Now it may seem obvious that you should do what your guitar teacher tells you to do. But lots of people still second guess a lot of what they are taught. And also make sure as you go into the lessons, especially if you have been playing guitar for a long time, to keep an open mind. Accept that they are the more experienced guitar teacher and know how to teach you.
Practising correctly when you are away from your teacher is vital for your progress on the guitar. Whether you are a beginner, getting past those barre chord stages or at an advance level wanting to shred at 1000 notes per minute. You need to know how to effective practise to get the most out of your practising time when you are away.
There are a lot of great teachers out there who will teach you this, but a lot may not. This is definitely something you need to look out for. Once you know how to practise, your progress will accelerate like mad.
Can they refer to other students that have achieved good results with them? Do they have videos of students and what they’ve said about the improvements in their playing?
Often when people look for guitar teachers, they look at how good the teacher is at playing guitar. But actually the most important thing is how good are they are getting their students results. This shows how good they are at teaching guitar. Which is what you want. You want someone who can turn you into a greater player than you ever could if you tried on your own or with online resources, books or with a friend. You want someone dedicated to getting you better at guitar and have the ability to do so.
As you are committing to trusting this person, letting them teach this amazing skill of guitar. It’s important that you meet them to ensure you are fully comfortable and confident they can help you before you start lessons. So when you do start, you are ready to take in everything they so and progress fast!
When you look for your potential guitar teacher, ask them how long they have been teaching for. It’s important for you to find someone who does have a certain amount of experience when it comes to teaching guitar. You could get a beginner guitar teacher, but you won’t get results as quickly. Why is that? Because they have less experience in solving people’s problems, challenges, and getting them results. The more experience they have in helping people reach their goals, the quicker they can do it for you. They should also have taught a lot of different guitar students and more importantly, students who are similar to yourself. Both of these will help protect you to ensure you don’t have a teacher who is using you purely as a guinea pig.
With all of these points to consider, make sure you go for a teacher who you can definitely trust to get you the results you are looking for. And someone who genuinely cares about you and your progress on the guitar.
If you are based in East London and looking for a guitar teacher to either help you get started on the guitar, or help you solve some frustrates you have with your playing and to accelerate your progress on the guitar. Click on the button below to get in touch with us. We ask that you fill in a short form about yourself, so we can find out how we can help you. We offer a free introductory lesson so you can find out how we can help you achieve your goals on the guitar.
How to pick between an acoustic or electric guitar
Are you beginner guitar playing struggling to know whether you should start on the acoustic or electric guitar? Read on to find out which instrument will help you make the most progress when you first start learning how to play the guitar.
First, I’m going a big myth that goes around amongst beginner guitar players. I’m not sure where this myth has come from, but it’s so untrue that it’s worth pointing out the facts so you can make a clear judgement based on the rest of the article with this in mind.
“It’s better to start on the acoustic guitar, because the acoustic guitar is easier to learn on, and then you get the electric guitar once you get better at playing.”
This statement is not true at all. Based on many reasons. As a beginner guitar playing, you are much better off starting with an electric guitar. Let’s see why:
The first thing, on either the acoustic or electric guitar, when you first start, you will have some challenges. These include your finger strength, your fingertips, your wrist and struggling to find the strings and knowing where the frets are. With this in mind, the electric guitar is much easier to play because it has thinner strings that are easier to press down while your finger tips have not yet toughened up yet and your finger strength is still weak.
And on the acoustic guitar, you have a big body that you have peer over to see your fretboard and see your strings to see what you are playing. This design doesn’t help your posture and makes the whole process much harder when you first start to learn how to play the guitar.
For these reasons, with an electric guitar, you are less likely to get tired and have pain when you are playing, so you can practise for longer. Making more progress early on means you can slowly gain strength and build up the toughness required in your fingers as your body leans to get used to playing the guitar. So with all these points in mind, it seems obvious that you would always start with an electric guitar. So let’s look at why this might not be the case for you.
There is only one big reason why you would start with an acoustic guitar, and that depends on the style of music that you want to play.
If you only ever want to play the acoustic guitar, you want to play acoustic style music, finger style songs. You don’t have any interested in ever ever playing the electric guitar because you don’t like it and for whatever reasons. Then get an acoustic guitar. You want to get one that you feel comfortable and feels easy to play on. This might be slightly harder in the beginner when you start playing for the reasons we talked about above. But the most important thing when you first start playing the guitar is you want to play an instrument that you love. You want to come home from work and see your guitar hanging on the wall or sitting by your chair and get excited about picking it up and practising for hours. If the acoustic guitar does that for you then you should definitely get an acoustic guitar when you first start.
If you ever want to play the electric guitar later down the stage then get an electric guitar for the reasons we stated before.
If you are into rock music and other type of music with lots of solos and improvisation. You get a great advantage with the electric guitar. This is because the electric guitar tend to have a lot more frets than an acoustic. Often acoustic guitars, when it goes past the 12th fret, you will find that the body of the guitar restricts you from playing the higher frets. This can really restrict you when improvisation and perhaps not being able to play certain solos because of it. If you love the idea of improvisation and soloing then an electric guitar will be highly beneficial to you.
I would personally always recommend that you get both acoustic and electric guitars if you are ever considering playing both at one point. I would start with the electric guitar and set some goals to achieve, and then get an acoustic later on down the line.
The most important thing to repeat once again is that you want to start on the instrument that gets you the most excited. If you are excited by both acoustic and electric guitars, then get the electric first. If you only ever want to play the acoustic guitar, then get the acoustic guitar. And whatever you do, stay persistent, and keep playing even when you’ve got struggles and challenges. The limiting factor when you first start learning how to play the guitar is not whether you have an acoustic or electric guitar. It’s whether you put in the effort and work into progress in your playing. That makes the biggest difference of all.
Are you wanting to start playing the guitar but don’t know where to start? Do you want someone to guide you along a proven path that you know will get you to where you want to be? Do you want to have the ability to play your favourite songs with ease?
We are here to help you progress at the guitar from beginner to advance. Whether you play the acoustic or electric guitar, find out how we can help you reach your goals by clicking on the button below to schedule your free assessment lesson. Where we will discuss how best we can help you.
How to Motivate Yourself to Practise the Guitar
There may come a time when you are lacking motivation for practising and playing the guitar. Perhaps you’ve been busy with school or work recently, had a holiday, or anything else. Or you are struggling with something and feel like you are not getting anywhere with the guitar. It’s time to use some of the following tricks to help you kick-start your guitar playing again.
It’s useful to know what you want to achieve on the guitar. One – it gives you a target to aim towards. Two – it keeps you focused, so you aren’t off doing other things that won’t help you in the long run.
Things that are useful to consider may be the type of songs you want to play; if you want to be in a band; do you want to perform and do it confidently; do you want to be able to express yourself better with the guitar improvising?
All these examples are the type of things you might consider when working out what you want to do.
Once you’ve done that, write up your goals onto a piece of paper. Now pin your piece paper up somewhere obvious. Perhaps next to where you practise your guitar. This is so that you can remind yourself what your target is.
Where are you practising when you are at home? Do you have a space that you can comfortable do your practising in?
The best situation for you to be in is where you have to put minimal effort in between you moving from that comfortable sofa to practising the guitar.
Having your guitar in a case, having to get your music notes out of your bag, not know what to practise. They are all things holding you back from practising as soon as possible. Creating this imagery mental barrier. Have you ever heard people say, “getting dressed and ready for the gym is half the battle of actually going?” Keep it easy by having everything out and ready for you.
Even the best people in the world struggle with motivation at some point. Having someone to keep you accountable, whether it’s a teacher or being in a band, or committing to playing with friends will help encourage you to practise.
If you are struggling to progress, then Guitar Tuition East London is here to provide you with electric guitar lessons in London that actually motivate you and help keep you accountable.
Make sure the people that you surround yourself with regarding playing the guitar are supportive. Some people may be less enthusiastic about your guitar playing compared to other people, so it’s important that you have people who will keep you motivated to get better.
If after investing a lot of hours into practising and still feel like you have not made much progress. It can be demotivating.
Firstly, check if you know how to get results from practising. For some people, they might know exactly what they need to do to get to their goal. For most people, you might need a teacher who will be able to help you with your practising. That’s what we do here at Guitar Tuition East London. We help you to know exactly how to get to your goal as quickly as possible, and with you putting in the effort to practise. You will see results quickly and not feel demotivated when practising.
Make sure when you are practising, you need to make sure you are practising, not playing the guitar. You need to challenge yourself, so you don’t end up in a rut or staying in a box. Separate the time you use for playing the guitar and practising as two different things.
When you achieve something new, write it down! Keep all your achievements in a notebook so that when you are feeling down about your progress. You can look at it and see how far you have come.
Keep other notes about new revelations so that you don’t want to remember what new thoughts you had last time you practised. Saves you lots of time, and keeps you focused as well.
I hope you’ve found this article helpful. If you would like to find out how we can help you to improve your practising to help motivate you on playing the guitar and improving then get in touch. We offer a free introductory lesson to let you find out more about how we can help you.
Today we are looking at the top 8 of the most common reasons that people struggle with improving on the guitar.
I have seen from people I’ve met, students and musicians who have come to me asking for help, struggling and frustrated, wondering how they can improve their guitar playing. I want you to watch out for these, spot the common reasons so that you can avoid them, and make more improvements to your guitar playing overall.
Watch video with Darryl to find out what these reasons are.
The single one biggest reason that I see that causes guitarists to not improve their guitar playing is just that they are not persistent enough. There will be challenges and difficult parts to playing the guitar. Your fingers and wrist will hurt, I will be lying if I said you can play the guitar and never have any pain. But you need to get past these problems, you need to find a solution to solve the problems that you have. Whether you do this by yourself or get someone to help you. You should never ever give up. Working through your challenges will make you a much better player afterwards.
We have lots of people who come to us having played for 5, 10, 15, 20 years who have struggled to improve. The main reason we see is that they keep playing the same things they are comfortable with over and over again. For some, it might be playing the same songs over and over, or doing similar exercises, using the same instructional DVD or books. Keeping doing the same things all the time will not help you help you to make big improvements in your playing.
We often see this with self-taught guitarists, whether they are learning electric guitar or acoustic guitar. They look up their favourite songs and perhaps the tab or the video for it and go learn that song. Now when you learn songs, while you do learn some new things, you are not going to make leaps and bounds of improvement on your guitar playing. The most important aspects of becoming a true musician and guitarist rather than just a copycat is the understanding the fundamentals that go into these songs. How are they put together, what techniques are used and why they are used. Wouldn’t you rather know all the building blocks and be able to play any song you want? Rather than learn one song at a time? You need to be playing more than songs if you want to improve your guitar playing.
This happens almost subconsciously for most people and before they know it, and before they even realise it, they haven’t improved in months and years. What is important is to put yourself into the cycle of learning and stay there. Many people hit their goals or milestones and get too happy and then forget to think of new things they want to do. So you need to always aim for another goal when you are playing to motivate you to improve your guitar playing, whether you are wanting to learn to play electric guitar or acoustic guitar.
A lot of people will go in search of the information they think they need on the internet to try to improve their guitar playing. They haven’t gone to a professional, and they end up with random exercises that aren't right for them. The problems with random exercises and information is that they can be wrong for them in so many ways. Such as being it’s too hard, it’s too easy, there’s too much of it, too little of it, in the order order, the wrong information altogether! They are practising them the wrong way, not enough practise of them, it’s not congruent with what they should be learning to reach their goals. You really need specific information that’s specific for you to make drastic transformation to your guitar playing.
There are a lot of beginner guitar players who believe that they do not need a teacher. That guitar is easily self-taught, and it is still effective. This is just not true for so many reasons. There are also lots of the guitarists who get to a point and think that they are too good for a guitar teacher and that they won’t be able to help them or won’t have anything to teach them. Thinking this way means a teacher will struggle to teach them because they are not willing to be taught.
And behind it all, trying to teach yourself will always be a struggle as playing guitar requires such precise technique and skill. There are so many professional guitarists and musicians who still have a teacher and coach who helps them with their guitar playing. All the while, you just don’t know what you don’t know yet, so trying to find information for something you didn’t know you need is difficult and will hinder your guitar playing progress.
To play the guitar, you must believe you can. A lot of people don’t give themselves enough believe and think that maybe they are just struggling because they are not talented enough. This holds them back from wanting to committing fully because they are scared of failing. Remember, no babies ever left the womb being able to play guitar straight away. The skill of playing guitar is learnt through various different experiences that all come together. It’s important that you believe that you can play like the guitarists that you aspire to, to even give yourself a chance of succeeding.
There are some people who are actually subconsciously holding themselves back from improving their guitar playing. This is mainly because they are worried about how much effort and work it will take to get there. And I would say is that if you really love playing the guitar and really enjoy music, then no amount of work is too great to ensure that you get to do something you really enjoy! And it won’t feel like work after awhile once you get past some of the initial challenges of getting your brain to work with your hands and body. Every time you play, you are building that momentum to improve your guitar playing for your whole entire lifetime.
Are you wanting to improve your guitar playing and feel like you are in one of these traps and don’t know how to get out of it? Do you want to have some more variety in your playing but don’t know how? Are you wanting to be able to express yourself and make the guitar sound great when you play?
If this sounds like you at all and you are based in London, then speak to us about how we can help you progress and improve your guitar playing. In fact, we are so sure we can help you that we provide a free introductory lesson to talk about what challenges you are having, whether you are just starting out a beginner guitar playing or you are an advanced shredder, we know we can get you to progress.
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As more and more guitar resources, apps, games are appearing, we are seeing more and more frustrated guitar players who have attempted to learn online or from books. Whether it’s through YouTube or from books. They often leave people struggling rather than succeeding at what they love to do. In this article, we look at the main issues and why you may be struggling to learn guitar online from YouTube or from books. These are very common and problems that we’ve seen from lots of students who have come to us asking for help.
One of the problems with YouTube or books is that you aren’t getting feedback, so even though you think you know exactly what they are doing on the videos, you can’t see certain things about yourself. And because you don’t have feedback, you aren’t sure why you aren’t sounding right and know what is actually going on and what the problems are that needs fixing.
So the first problem is, is the person teaching you actually a good teacher? So for online guitar lessons, it's very easy for people to access the internet and start teaching the teacher. They may be a good player, but that doesn’t always translate into being a good teacher. So there are a lot of YouTubers and guitar teachers online. There are a lot of good teachers, I’m not saying all of them are bad. There are lots of good and also a lot of bad teachers out there.
The problem is that the material that you are watching, how do you know they are the right level for where your guitar playing is at? It’s often up to you to select which materials are right for you, so how do you know that the materials are definitely right for where you are at right now? And what the problems or areas you need more teaching in to overcome? Often our students come to us with big blind spots that they didn’t even know they had, and they are busy focusing on something else. And once we start working on the blind spots with them, that’s when the real results come.
There is no one to hold you accountable. When you are meeting with a teacher face to face, there is someone to encourage you to do the practise, to help you if you are struggling to practise. There is someone who if you don’t do your practise, is there to encourage you to do so and challenge you when needed. With YouTube and books, it’s very easy to let things slide, or ignore the lessons. And when you don’t understand something to abandon it, which can leave holes in your playing.
YouTube and books use a lot of generalised information when actually you need specialised information. For example, you and your guitar learning is like a car. So when going online, they say yes you need good tyres, and make sure your engine is running well. But actually when you and your car have problems, you need to specific manual with your engine and your tyres and your exhaust. And that is what happens online. You need specific information to help you with guitar playing. You don’t generalised information that may help general people. Generalised information will help you in a long term to a certain extent, but the real key is in specialised information that will really help you right now to make progress and continue in the long term to get you the results a lot quicker.
Generally, you will have questions at some point about your playing, and about the guitar. And someone students even have problems that they don’t even know how to put into words and they need to show someone by playing the guitar to them. Sometimes writing down the questions may work, but sometimes you do need to show them what the issues are. With most guitar lessons online, it’s hard to be able to get those specific questions you may have answered. So getting feedback in person can definitely help a lot with that.
However, they often lead to be less confident when playing in front of other people or playing with other people. Those are big skills that you really need to experience, to learn how to communicate musically, learning how to count and play with other people. Online lessons often make you struggle to experience these things, so then it’s easy to lack confidence and make it a struggle to play at parties or in front of other people.
We hope this guide has helped you understand a bit more about the reasons why you may be struggling online and know that these are very common problems. To resolve these problems quickly, the best way is to find a great guitar teacher.
If you are based in East London, and you are struggling with learning guitar online, we would love to hear from you. In our lessons, you can get specialised coaching and training in person. Get in contact with us by clicking the button below, we offer a free introductory guitar lesson so we can see where your playing is at, and how we can help you reach your goals. Look forward to hearing from you.
Electric Guitar Lessons London in Stratford, East London. Near Bow, Wanstead, Leytonstone, Mile End, Bethnal Green, Woodford, Snaresbrook, Hackney.