Jam Babble

It’s found quite readily in many different types of self learning software such as languages. Speech recognition is used when you want to learn Spanish or French, how about note or chord recognition for guitar?

Well there’s a new version of eMedia Guitar Method out that does more or less just that. I have always been waiting for a program that allows you to plug in your electric guitar some how (hence the plug N Play Title of the post) and provides feedback on whether you’re playing notes correctly or incorrectly. How ever eMedia is almost there with it’s note recognition features.

Basically you attache a mic to your computer and when you’re practicing the software interprets the sound to say whether you’re playing correctly or not. This is a big step of guitar learning software since before my personal opinion of it was it was not much better then learning straight from a book. With this new feature eMedia guitar becomes more of an interactive program that provides real time feedback as you’re learning.

Other programs such as a learn to play guitar dvd also don’t offer real time feedback but because you’re watching someone on the screen doing what they’re teaching you you’re better able to judge whether you’re performing things correctly or not.

Check out eMedia Guitar 5 it’s available for both Mac and PC

Beauty and guitar playing might not be things you think of going hand in hand. Just take a look at any hard rock guitar player and I’m sure beauty or personal hygine aren’t two things that pop into your mind. How ever they likely do pay specific attention to their finger nails and how they take care of them. Why? Well many guitar players use their fingers nails to pick with and if they aren’t strong enough or break they need to be able to care for them so their playing doesn’t suffer.

I read a post today at gutiarlicksandtips.com about nail care products. I was surprised by what some of it said. Something that stood out for me was the mention of using acrylic nails as a guitar player. Personally it’s never been something I’ve thought of, but then again I use a pick 90% of the time. How ever I can see how they would work, and likely not break very often.

The products I was more familiar with were nail hardener, which is sort of like nail polish but not exactly. It’s used ot harden and toughen up your nails. Also crazy glue, which I have used to piece a broken nail back together.

I wouldn’t get too carried away with using products on your fingers but it is something to keep in mind. It’s one of those little guitar tricks you can keep in the back of your mind so that if you did crack a nail, rip it or feel your nails just aren’t strong enough you’d know what to do.

Here’s the post on nail care products I read earlier today.

I’m a huge fan of learning guitar form videos. It’s no secret, I’m always suggesting that beginners use quality guitar lessons dvd courses to learn from home if they aren’t going to be taking private lessons. So when I came across this video by Jonathan over at GutarTipsWeekly.com I had to share it.

He has been putting out some absolutely great stuff lately and I want to give a shout out to him for his hard work he’s been putting in at his blog lately.

This video covers the beginner open chords. These are the main chords you’d learn at first including E, A, G, C, D and F. They’re all on the first fret and don’t require any barre chords to be made. If you’re dying to learn a couple of songs to play mastering these chords will make it happen for you.

I wrote a post recently on how to learn chords better it would be worth checking out also since the exercises I suggest in that post would apply here to master these chords well.

So watch this video below it’s a few minutes long but it’s well worth the time. He’s done a great job an put a lot of his time into it I’d say.

Check it out below.

When you first start learning to play guitar it can be frustrating. There is a lot going on at once, your strumming hand is strumming your fretting hand is trying to make a shape it’s not used to combined with the fact that your fingers are pressing on strings all at once (a technique you’re not natural used to) and you’re trying to memorize chord shapes and patterns.

It’s not something you pick up the first day of lessons that’s for sure. I read a great article today about how you can improve your ability to make chord shapes and become more consistent. You see the trouble isn’t that you don’t have the ability, rather it can be a matter of you having issues with your mind doing everything at once. These three tips I’m going to share will help you over come the troubles of muting strings, switching chords too slowly or not being able to get the right fingers on the right frets.

1 – Don’t Stop Strumming

No matter what when you’re playing a chord and switching between another keep that strumming hand moving. Often times beginners will have trouble keeping the two hands independent of each other, so if you find your fretting hand stumbling and having troubles switching between the chords don’t stop strumming.

2 – Just Change Chords

Forming chords correctly whether it be slow or fast and switching between them is a separate skill from strumming. Try forming chords without strumming and switching between them. For instance make an E major then switch to a G major and to a D major then an A major. This will get your brain and fretting hand on the same page of what you need to do to make the chords and switch between them.

3 – Pressure Practice

While your making the chords you’re having trouble with press down hard on the strings, then release your hand and hover just above the strings, then press hard again and hold it for a few seconds. This gets your brain and fingers talking and understanding that you need to be moving and using all your fingers at once. This can sometimes be difficult at first to have your fingers all pressing at once since it’s not a natural motion.

This are 3 great practice exercises to work on if you’re finding beginner chords difficult. Whether you’re learning to play using a guitar lesson dvd, form YouTube or a private teacher chords are primary skill you’ll want to learn to take the time to do it right the first time.

I never really thought of it as a debate about whether a guitar player should learn barre chords or not. That is until I read an article on a fellow guitar blog this morning. The author makes argument (and a good one mind you) that you don’t need to learn to play barre chords to become a great guitar player.

My first thought is “how the heck can he say that, you’re far too limited if you don’t play barre chords” then I got to thinking about it after I read the whole article. It’s true I’ve taught myself as well as used some popular guitar lessons dvd courses to learn guitar. Barre chords were just part of the learning process of course I’d want to know them as they were available to learn, but let’s really dissect the concept of barre chords and whether we really need them.

1 – All the Chords are already there

My first ideas is that you can play almost every chord you need on the first fret (there are a couple of exceptions). Since songs can only be made from so many chords it makes sense that you wouldn’t really ever have to learn barre chords to write a great song.

Sure barre chords are sometimes used as affect during certain styles how ever at the root of a great song is the chord progression and melody. The chords can be played open they don’t have to be barred.

2 – Guitars already make too much noise

From a quote in the other article I read a great musician said that the guitar is already too present in many recordings he hears. This is a good point, many players, especially in rock bands, tend to over do the guitar. They play too much too loud not allowing other instruments in the similar range to cut through. If we played less that would be OK which means that barre chords might not be required.

The key is to learn how to be tasteful, how to inject emotion into your playing and you don’t have to use barre chords or power chords to do that. You can achieve a great sound with open chords as well as riffs and arpeggios.

The moral, don’t worry so much about learning power and barre chords. Instead look at your uniqueness and style. You’ll go further as a guitar player with unique and different abilities then you will as the another power or barre chord king.

It’s the first lesson usually in a learn guitar dvd or from a private instructor, how to tune your guitar. Well it looks as if Gibson guitars is going to eliminate the need to tune a guitar yourself. Personally I think it’s great, but some may disagree.

This new feature as of right now is only available on one current model the Gibson “dark fire”, but it comes equipped to handle up to 16 different types of tunings including standard and several dropped tunings.

For anyone who plays live and just hates having to always stare down at that tuning peddle between songs this could be a great feature.

Of course the feature isn’t going to be for everyone since the guitar is well over $3000 USD. It’s possible that maybe anyone wanting to spend that kinda bucks on an electric guitar may have someone off stage right tuning their several guitars for them while they’re playing.

None the less it’s neat new technology coming down the line and if technology has taught us anything what seems luxury right now won’t stay that long forever. Thing back it wasn’t that long ago that flat panel displays and LCD or Plasma TV’s seemed to be the high end of that market only to become the standard today.

Check out the new Gibson Dark Fire.

There are a lot of things that can cause your guitar to go out of tune. Temperature and environment are two big things. You’ll notice if you’re ever out trying to play around a camp fire in the evening your guitar will constantly be going out of tune.

For beginners if you don’t already it’s a must to have a digital tuner, if you don’t have one get one, put it on the Christmas list or what ever you need to do but definitely get one.

Today I’ll give you a quick tip on how you can get your guitar in tune so it’s at least playable if you wanted to sit down and play for a bit but don’t have a tuner handy.

Most guitar lessons on dvd or private lessons teach this same tip.

Each strings note is repeated at several different places on the neck. Because of this you can readily get all 6 strings in tune with one another by basing it off of one string.

Let’s say you’re going to start with the 6th string, Low E. The 5th Fret of that E string is the same Note as the 5th String A. Like wise the 5th fret of the 5th string is the same as the 4th string, and this is the same for the 5th fret of the 4th string and the 3rd string.

There is one exception and that’s the B string. To get the B string in tune you must match it with the 4th fret of the 4th string G, but then the pattern returns for the 1st string high E it matches the 5th fret of the B string.

You can use this simple patter to get your guitar in tune by ear if you’re stuck. Of course this is no guarantee that you’ll be in perfect tune with other instruments but for playing on your own for a bit it’ll work out just fine!

Learning guitar chords is the real meat & potatoes of learning to play the guitar. Of course there are some things you need to be able to do before you jump into learning chords but more or less it’s the most exciting part of learning guitar.

If you’re teaching yourself to play there are a few viable methods you can use to learn guitar chords. This post is going to cover a few of those methods.

1.) Books & Charts: The old fashioned way, well not really that old but feels it in terms of the digital age, was to use posters, charts and books that listed the different ways to play chords. A chord book might contain literally 15-20 different ways to play a particular chord on the guitar neck. Of course this comes in handy when you want to play along with someone playing the same chord progression but maybe an octave higher.

Having a solid guitar chord book that you carry with you in your guitar case is a good idea. Possible alternatives to a chord book now are the iphone apps you can get that allow you to search chords or other digital programs that can be used on hand held devices

2.) YouTube: Ah yes youtube, while there is a lot of junk on this website there are some diamonds in the rough. You just need to know where you’re looking. Finding a few videos that cover the basics major and minor chords on the first few frets will help you with hand positioning and correct technique.

Careful though it’s easy to get sucked into hours and hours on youtube surfing videos. The big reason I’m not a huge fan of YouTube as a viable alternative to learn to play guitar is because it’s too darn difficult to find a string of videos that teach you new things in a logical order.

3.) Video Lessons: This isn’t just a method of learning guitar chords of course. You can learn to play guitar from scratch to a great player using the right guitar lesson dvds. Products like Amazing Guitar Secrets or Learn and Master guitar cover a massive amount of material and of course learning guitar chords is included in this.

What ever method you use to learn the basic guitar chords the key to getting good at them and switching between them is practice. It’s unavoidable. So get started learning the proper positions and fingerings then practice them, practice strumming them, practice switching between them and keep doing it until it feels second nature. At that point you should be ready to put it all together to play your first song.

It’s more or less impossible to play fast if you don’t practice. The key is learning to play not just quickly but accurately as well. No one likes hearing someone literally “shred” a tune. I found a great video today that covers 3 speed exercises to help yourself play quicker.

So if you’re looking for a way to speed up your playing, not the actual process of learning guitar you’ll like these.

Here’s a quick run down of some solid tricks to play quicker.

1.) Practice: Like I said it takes being able to play correctly and play well slowly before you can learn to play well quickly. If this is you then I suggest you take some time to learn to play things correctly slowly before you try to add speed into the mix.

2.) Playing both down and up when you’re picking will double how fast you can pick. This is a regular method used by a lot of high intensity players on lead. It takes some getting used to so again you want to learn it playing slowly before you learn it playing quickly.

3.) hammer ons and offs are also a solid method of playing faster. Avoiding having to pick the string at all can only save you time and that’s what they’ll do for you.

The video will get into the benefits of playing your scales to improve speed while picking as well as using a metronome to monitor your speed and test your skills.

Happy Watching!

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