Tag Archive for ‘how to’

Learn Acoustic Guitar – A Guide

Now days if you wish to learn acoustic guitar you'll find many sites on the web offering instruction and guidance.

Above all else, the question most asked is how long will it take me to learn acoustic guitar? Actually, there are three very important aspects which will decide the answer...

What is your natural aptitude to learn acoustic guitar? Is the instructional method youre using of high quality? How often do you practice?

Lets take the first question. Every person, no matter how good their instructor, has a natural aptitude for learning guitar. For example you may possess a fast ability for learning to surf but not for learning to drive. To learn acoustic guitar you wont know youre aptitude for the instrument until you begin.

The instructional method you use to learn acoustic guitar is extremely important as not all methods are equal. If you choose, for example, an out of date and old fashioned method it could slow your progress considerably, even to the point where you will want to give up.

Now days there are modern and new ways available to accelerate the time it takes to learn acoustic guitar. Make sure you are using one of those newer and more modern methods.

And so now we come to the topic of practice. It actually means one thing - consistency. This means that it's much better to practice 15 min daily than to do 90min on Saturday and nothing more. Each day it's important to touch base with the instrument for a short time as that's how you learn acoustic guitar effectively.

When you learn acoustic guitar you dont need to know hundreds of chords and strums to be able to play lots of songs. In fact, a simple set of just 10 chords and 3 strums will get you playing literally 100s of popular songs.

With the basics covered you can normally learn acoustic guitar in about 4 weeks to a standard good enough to strum along to songs. For some that will satisfy their ambitions while others will want to learn acoustic guitar to a more advanced level.

In the beginning stages you will find certain aspects of playing quite difficult, even impossible! But even the most accomplished players once started as complete beginners and with time, as you learn acoustic guitar, every obstacle now will eventually become effortless.

The old adage of practice makes perfect was probably thought of with musical instruments in mind. You can learn acoustic guitar just the same as anyone else with regular practice. The key is keeping your motivation over the long term to continue doing it. Good luck.

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Guitar Lessons in Cork

When you'd like to find guitar lessons in Cork there are a couple of obvious places to look. Firstly you can go for word of mouth and try asking around, especially if there's a musical instrument store in the area. If you have a local newsletter you'll often find a guitar teacher advertising in the classifieds.

Traditionally most people will think of checking local notice boards in supermarkets for guitar lessons in Cork but in reality they are not great and often you won't find any ads for guitar lessons there.

As the internet becomes more popular a search on Google can be very helpful. Youll find guitar lessons in Cork being advertised on a lot of the local forums such as Gumtree.ie and Peoples Republic of Cork for example.

Through this method it can be quite easy to get a list of local tutors giving guitar lessons in Cork and their contact details. It's a good idea to phone more than one so you can get an idea of price too. Before calling a potential guitar tutor make sure you've thought about what you'd like to learn. You need your guitar teacher to be professional and to possess the necessary knowledge required to teach you what you want. Remember that standards for people giving guitar lessons in Cork can vary enormously!

Don't continue with your guitar tutor if you are unhappy with the lessons! It's far better to stop and find someone else. You'll find that guitar lessons in Cork are expensive so you should feel you're getting your moneys worth and making progress.

We at Guitar in a Nutshell offer a complete service for guitar lessons in Cork.

Guitar in a Nutshell tutors have all been individually trained and offer first class lessons for complete beginners right through to advanced players. They work through a specialised and highly effective syllabus for learning guitar and their course books and Practice CDs are available to accompany your lessons.

When searching for guitar lessons in Cork its very important that your tutor is a good communicator. Does he or she have an open and friendly personality? Do they understand how to see things from your point of view as the beginner? Do they prepare and structure their lessons professionally?

Dont be disappointed if the first tutor you try for guitar lessons in Cork is not satisfactory. There are some excellent and very experienced people who give guitar lessons in Cork; you just have to put in the effort to find them!

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Learn Guitar Fast! Myth or Truth?

I'm sure if you've spent any time looking around the web for online guitar lessons you'll have come across sites telling you how you can learn guitar fast. Well, let's examine these learn guitar fast claims and find out the real truth.

The first thing to know is that there are both modern and old fashioned methods for learning guitar. What's exciting is that in the last few years certain methods have been developed which do genuinely succeed in teaching you to play guitar at a faster rate than before.

To this end it's obvious that the newer methods for learning guitar - to learn guitar fast - are indeed improvements on previous systems and achieve quicker results.

But, after that, it's buyer beware and I'll explain why...

In a nutshell, everyone has their own unique rate of improvement on guitar no matter what instruction you do! Sure the learn guitar fast method is super important but it can never over ride your own inbuilt speed for picking up the instrument.

This is called your aptitude for the instrument. In other words, how quickly you can pick it up and its different for each student. Learn guitar fast is relative!

This is one area which many people do not understand. Even if you have the best method to learn guitar fast, practice a lot and apply yourself, your rate of improvement may still be slower than someone with a more natural aptitude for learning the instrument.

You should never become depressed over your natural rate of improvement on guitar. Learning guitar is not a race and 'learn guitar fast' methods are not universal but they will ensure your rate of improvement is the maximum possible for you.

But hey who cares! So what if it takes you longer to learn those chord changes or strums, eventually you will still arrive at the same destination. Heres the important part...

You must choose a method to learn guitar fast which really understands how beginners learn guitar. By selecting a bad guitar method you could potentially hold up your improvement for months, get frustrated, think you have no talent and give up.

What a shame when in fact all that was wrong was the method you chose to learn guitar fast was simply old fashioned, out of date and ineffective.

Learn guitar fast? Sure, but choose wisely!

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Beginners Easy Guitar Songs

So now that you've learned the basic chords and strums it's time to play some easy guitar songs for beginners right?

The worst thing you could do at this tentative stage is attempt to play songs which are too difficult. By finding some easy guitar songs to play you'll maintain an even and enjoyable learning curve.

Let's look at some specific easy guitar songs for beginners. Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison or Please Mr. Postman by the Beatles would both be excellent easy guitar songs. Each contains no more than 4 chords and both share a simple strumming pattern.

Things which easy guitar songs for beginners have in common are a simple strumming pattern and the fact that you need only practice and learn 1-2 progressions in order to play the song. Those progressions will simple repeat over and over until then end of the song. Easy guitar songs are almost always characterised by these factors.

It's critical that you practice songs in time with the real recording. Make sure your strumming is even and correct and that your chords are changing in the right places.

Start with the chords and do a single down stroke in time with the entry of each new chord. The following step would be to play the strum on its own in time with the song using muted strings.

It would be a mistake to try to play all the various elements at once so next we apply just half of the strum to each chord before finally attempting the full strum. You can see from the above example that each element was practised on its own.

This process gives you the best possible chance of mastering easy guitar songs for beginners.

An obvious resource for chords and lyrics are the many sites online where you can search and download the song sheets for free. The only problem is that often there are no indications for strumming. For this reason you should learn your set system of strums, often 4 -5 will do, separately. With those strums it'll be possible to play 100's of easy guitar songs for beginners.

Please bear in mind that you should avoid songs which are still too hard for your current level of guitar playing. Use wisdom and stick to easy guitar songs for beginners until such time as your technically able to attempt more difficult pieces.

So what if you find these so called easy songs really hard? Well that's a sure sign you haven't done enough work on your basic chords and strumming. Go back! Once your foundation in the basics is well practiced everything else, including all these easy guitar songs for beginners, will flow effortlessly.

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Learn How To Play Guitar

I would bet money on the fact that nearly all men and some women as well have at one time in their life had the desire to learn how to play guitar.

Maybe that is because nowadays guitars would be a lot more accessible as well as the guitars have become a great deal less expensive. Guitars also can be easily taken with you much more than keyboards or some other instruments that makes it more convenient.

Guitars would be also a great deal less complicated to learn than some of the other instruments would be. Add to that the reality that several rock 'n' roll icons as well as country and western headliners utilize guitars. Though it's a shame that a lot of people that started out didn't pursue it, it's nice to realize that we'll never be without great guitarists in the world.

Starting off learning how to play guitar with guitar scales can be a little tough for the beginner. Reason being is that their finger strength and finger tip calluses have not developed yet. This can cause frustration for the beginner as their finger tips will become sore a lot quicker. That said you might want to start with a few simple chords.

If you insist on starting off learning scales start with the pentatonic scale.

When learning how to play guitar scales, many may state that the pentatonic scale would be the easiest one to learn. That would be due to the fact that the pentatonic scale would be just utilizing 5 notes rather than the standard 7 notes. You had better not overlook learning the pentatonic scale since it's vital around mastering the other modes of scales.

When learning the first pattern of the pentatonic scale you are actually learning 2 scales the Major and the Minor scale. Why? The same pattern is used for both it all depends on which finger you use to start the scale. If you start the pattern using your index finger the scale will resolve to minor, if you start the pattern with your pinky finger the scale will resolve Major. We sometimes tell our students to think of it as happy finger sad finger.

There is so much more to cover that is beyond the scope of this post. If you would like you can check back later for my next article or head over to my Blog. Till next time,

Tony D.

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