Playing Guitar: Tips and Tricks From A Fellow Musician

Hello there, audience. My last blog was about music, and I decided that I would continue the trend in honor of the new addition to my musical family. A quick story first, and then I'll get to business.

Once upon a time, I played cello. I got really into guitar, and my parents traded in the contract on my lease to own cello and got me an electric guitar starter kit from Ibanez. It's a nice deep blue GIO, and his name is Ray Charles. Yes, I do realize Ray Charles played piano. I've had Ray for about four years, maybe five now, and he's still playing strong. A couple years ago, I got a Peavey Predator for Christmas/Birthday (they're close enough together that I get presents all at once, but far enough apart that I don't get them combined and get half the presents. :D). It was bright red, and I named her Anna Lee after the song by Dream Theater. In the last year or so, I needed money to repair Ray Charles and decided, after much deliberation, to sell Anna Lee to procure the funds necessary. It was sad, but it had to be done. This last week, my mother went to Arizona on business and took some of her down time to visit relatives living there. She visited my great uncle, who had a few guitars left to him when his son died in the early 2000's. He decided to present one of them to me as a gift, and mother brought it back to me last night. It's a dark red Epiphone SG Special. Her name is Roxanne, or Roxy for short.

This is one of me and Ray Charles, way back when I started playing. I've come a long way since.

In playing Roxy for a few hours, I sort of rekindled my passion for playing guitar. I've been feeling a bit stale lately, as I don't have much material to learn or any specific direction to practice in. Getting this new guitar as a gracious gift, and it being of better quality than Ray Charles, I decided to run over a lot of old songs I know in E standard tuning. Roxy plays smoothly enough that it was an absolute joy to play, and I ended up sitting around for hours playing old material from memory. Now, I'm sitting on the couch next to my gorgeous new guitar, and I decided to try and take some pieces from my own guitar playing experience and try and pass on some tips to aspiring fellow guitarists, whether I know you personally or if we have never met and doubtfully ever will. So, without further ado, here are some things I have done in the past or still do to keep up my skill and continue to improve.

Don't laugh. This is where all great guitarists started out.

Always always always start with a strong foundation.
If you don't know how basic music theory works, put down your guitar and go sit in on an elementary school music class. You need to understand what scales are, sharps flats and naturals, chords, time signature and meter, and how to read basic sheet music, tabs, and chord charts. These are VITAL to getting a proper base in music. You can learn everything and anything if you know just a few basic things that you can pick up from any 

music class or book on the basics of playing an instrument. Take the time to learn it.

Along with that, you need to understand the fundamentals of the instrument. Know what all the parts are and what they do. I know it sounds childish, but it really is important. Think of how foolish you would feel talking to another guitarist about playing and not being able to even talk to them about your instrument, let alone how to play it. Learn how to hold a pick, or how to finger-pick or strum with your nails if you would rather not use a pick. Be able to play all the strings at once, or one at a time, or isolated groups of two or three. Know how to place your finger on the frets to get the proper tone, how to palm mute, how to alternate pick, etc. Basic guitar techniques. If you don't know how to do any of these, go out and get a starter book for guitar and begin to learn there. Or, look it up online. Or ask a friend. Or get a teacher. But don't move forward until you have those basics down. 

Everything is 200% more frustrating without them. This is where a lot of aspiring guitarists slip up and then quit when things get hard. I wouldn't have made it this far without a firm grounding in basic music theory and guitar playing technique. So learn it.

Start with what you know.

The easiest place to begin is somewhere familiar. Pick a band you know and love, and choose a song by them you've always wanted to learn. Go online and try to find tabs or chord charts or sheet music of their songs. There are countless sites for archiving music for guitar, but my personal favorite is [ultimate-guitar.com]. If you can't find it online, then try listening to the song and picking out parts by ear. This is more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding, as it trains you to actively listen, to seek out pitch and teach yourself by repetition how to listen to guitar parts. If you do find an outside record of the music, sit down with it and read it over while listening to the song. Familiarize yourself with the flow of the song, the order of riffs, which melodies repeat or are varied upon and where, etc. Really drill it into your head. Then, start playing.

No snarky remarks here. Just do it.

Take it one step at a time.

Pick out individual riffs or licks, starting from the top, and play them by yourself. Do it over and over and over again until you're comfortable playing it straight through with relatively little mistakes on most of your runs. No one is perfect, but if you strive to play it perfectly, then you'll always do better. Once you're comfortable, try playing along with the song. Again, do it over and over and over again, until you can keep up with the song and play it as much like the recording as possible. With that piece down, go back, pick up the next portion, and start again. When you have that down, play the song from the top. Keep going until you can play everything straight through comfortably with the recording. Take it piece by piece one step at a time until you're playing the entire song straight through. After that, you can shut off the recording and play through it by yourself to ensure you've really committed everything to memory.

Don't get discouraged if you're not very good. Most of the songs I learned for the first year or so of playing were played entirely on the low E string, and were very very simple. You have to start somewhere, and that's why starting with something you like will help. It's a song you like to listen to, one you know, and one you really want to play, if only the simplest part or your favorite melody. Every hour of practice you put in strengthens your callouses, builds muscle memory, reaction time, and overall comfort with your instrument. The best way to ensure you never learn to play is by choosing something too difficult or a song you aren't familiar with and then giving up because you can't do it right away. It takes lots of practice to learn an instrument, and guitar is especially hard because it hurts your fingers to be pressing on the strings for long periods, as well as frustrating your brain when trying to make your fingers move in the correct order or with the proper timing and speed or to go to the correct positions without much difficulty. Just keep trying over and over again, and you'll be sure to make progress.

Trust me. Everyone has one of these moments.

Keep broad horizons.
As much fun as it would be to learn every song by a single band, most artists only have a few tricks up their sleeves as to the way they write songs. Once you learn a few songs by your favorite artist, pick another and learn some of theirs. Pick different genres, styles, tempos, and difficulty levels. If you know four fast songs, start learning some slow ones. Balance is key to becoming a well rounded musician. That includes genres as well as difficulty levels. If all you know how to play is super fast songs, you may not develop proper technique for keeping rhythm. Super technical songs are fun, but they get you accustomed to memorizing patterns, not actual song structures. You should be able to strum the guitar to a soft rock song as well as you can shred your technical metal songs. The same applies the other direction. Don't learn all slow, easy going, simple songs. Pick some faster or more upbeat songs, or ones with riffs rather than chord progressions. Or just learn the lead guitar parts to simpler songs.

I started off playing Metallica and The Misfits on one string, then taught myself some Dio. I picked up tabs for Iron Maiden and Megadeth, some AC/DC, Led Zeppelin. Eventually I got into Dream Theater and burned blood sweat and tears trying to learn it. I got some simpler things like Ludo, or some pop rock songs with simple tunes. I also played for the worship band at my youth group, so I learned songs with simple repetitive chord progressions but specific strumming patterns or rhythms. I learned fast songs and slow ones, easy ones and much harder ones. 

Sometimes, I only knew two riffs out of a song because the rest were too difficult to play at the time. Eventually I came back when I was better and tried again. Now I can play a stack of Dream Theater songs, a lot of Megadeth, As I Lay Dying, All That Remains, The Human Abstract, some Red, some Forgive Durden, I learned to play and sing a bunch of Ludo, I've even learned some classical songs I transcribed for guitar. I let my playing repertoire reflect my taste in music and spread out the type of things I learned to encompass a lot of it. It keeps things interesting, and it keeps my playing from getting too shred heavy or too slow-strumming filled.

Use your senses to improve your own playing.
Listen carefully to what you're doing. There are plenty of guitar tabs or chord charts that were put together incorrectly, and what you play can end up sounding very different from what the song sounds like. Listen to the parts that sound incorrect and determine whether it was a mistake in the written music, or if you're playing something incorrectly. If something feels awkward to play, try to find a different way of playing it. Move the notes around on the fretboard to a place that might be easier for you to play. Run through the song over and over and try to discover what notes are wrong and correct them for yourself. There's almost nothing quite as rewarding for me as discovering an error in a tab and figuring out the right way to play it on my own by ear. Especially when 323 people gave that tab a 5 star rating and told the author it was perfect and awesome and magical.

Ear horn is optional.

Above all, trust your senses. After listening and playing to a song a few dozen times, you should be able to tell if something is wrong or needs adjusting. If you find out you're playing something wrong, play it over and over the right way to correct your muscle memory. Constantly check up to make sure that everything is falling properly into place before you go on playing. There's not much worse than learning to play a song, and then realizing weeks later that you have been playing it wrong the whole time and having to re-teach your fingers what to do.

Constantly practice and refine your playing.
Practice may not always make perfect, but it makes it damn close. You have to set aside time to play regularly or else you will lose callous, finesse, muscle memory, or just forget entire songs. If you're really serious about learning, you'll find the time to play an hour or two every few days. Start by warming up your hands with something simple, some exercises you get from elsewhere or you come up with yourself. Things that get both hands awake and ready to play. Play things you know really well first, to keep them solid in your memory and to refine whatever techniques those songs use. Then move onto things you're learning or are having trouble with. Dedicate most of your time to working out mistakes and correcting them. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over should be exactly what your practice time looks like. Until you get it right, or you've made progress and want to move onto something else.

Never stop learning new things. Always try to find something new to play that challenges you in a new way. Something that requires more finesse and attention to strumming or picking patterns, something that stretches your muscle memory by using weird chords or chord progressions, learning new riffs or techniques that make your hands do things you haven't done before. Keep it diverse, keep it interesting, and keep it challenging. If everything you pick up to play is really easy, look into another artist or genre of music.

Along the way, pick up as much music theory as you need to continue getting better. Learn about different scales or keys or modes or chord progressions. Look into blues and jazz and learn about improvising. Start trying to come up with songs of your own using techniques or styles you have learned and become comfortable with. Nothing stretches your ability with your instrument like putting all your knowledge on the table and trying to create something of your own out of it. Write your own songs, then come up with lyrics. Write chord progressions and fun licks to play on them. Come up with riffs or lead melodies. Write solo parts. Write harmonies. Find another guitarist to play with. Always try to find something new and challenging to present yourself with when you become comfortable and capable with the last. The greatest guitarists in the world are still learning and growing and practicing and developing their abilities every single time they pick up their guitar.

Even now, when they're playing for crowds like this.

Most important of all, Have fun.
If your practice sessions consist of you getting really frustrated at a new song or a difficult riff, and then giving up and storming away, try to lay off on the new stuff for a while. The whole point of playing guitar is to have fun making music that you enjoy. The second it stops being fun, you're crossing out of the zone you should be playing in. Now, if you're just giving up because you don't want to try, then maybe you should push yourself a little harder. It takes lots of practice, and sometimes things just seem impossible. But if you keep at it, you'll work through it and learn to overcome whatever difficulty you're facing. And then you can be proud of yourself for having learned that really difficult song, and you can show it off to all of your friends. If you give up, you really never will get any better, and you might as well sell your guitar, because it's not that you can't do it. It's that you're choosing not to try.

So there you have it. A bunch of things I spewed off the top of my head to try and help point you in the right direction. I hope that you find something useful in there, because it's these kinds of things that helped me get as far as I am today. I've been playing for 6 years now, I've learned probably more than 50 songs, written a handful or two of my own, I've played all different styles of music at all different kinds of concerts, from talent shows to worship sets to actual paid gigs at a local venue, and with all different kinds of musicians of all different styles and music tastes and backgrounds and skill levels. If you stick to it, and you really want to go somewhere with guitar, you will. But it's constant work, and it's not always easy.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read this, audience. I hope I could help. I look forward to seeing albums with your names on them in music stores soon, or at least getting the opportunity to play with some of you sometime. Farewell for now, my invisible friends.

Maybe I'll see you again someday soon.