Playing Guitar - The Sliding "D" Chord
If you've been playing guitar for a while, you already are familiar with barre chords.
The nice thing about barre chords is the fact that, once you know the fingering positions, you can simply slide that formation up and down the guitar neck to form different chords in various keys.
But did you know that there are some cool things you can do by "sliding" open guitar chords to various positions on the neck?
How to Practice Guitar, Without Your Guitar - 5 Easy Exercises
As we go through the course of our day, regardless of how busy our schedules are, many times we encounter "in between" moments - occasions where we find ourselves with a few minutes of down time.
Periodically I get questions from students asking how they can work on their guitar playing during those "in between" moments.
Quite often these few moments of down time occur during the work day, on a lunch break, waiting to pick the kids up from school, or in the middle of some other activity where it's just not practical to have your guitar with you.
So how can you work on your guitar playing skills, without a guitar? Here are some tips.
Read more: How to Practice Guitar, Without Your Guitar - 5 Easy Exercises
Guitar Lessons - An Easy Double Note Blues Riff
If you are in the early stages of learning to play lead guitar, you may have learned to play some scales and single note lead runs.
Things start to get a little more interesting when you can start to add in lead licks that are comprised of two notes played simultaneously.
Today we will look at a common blues riff built mainly on two note licks in the key of A. We will play these in the A minor pentatonic, or A "blues" scale, in the 5th fret position.
How to Improve Your Guitar Strumming Today
In the early days of learning to play the guitar, there are a number of obstacles to overcome. Un-cooperative hands and fingers, unfamiliar theories and concepts, new terms and nomenclature, inability to make clear sounding chords, sore finger tips, and general frustration with learning something foreign.
But one of the most common challenges I see with new guitar students is getting comfortable with strumming.
Part of the problem with learning strumming on the guitar is that the strumming hand and the playing hand are attempting to do two different things simultaneously. The playing hand is forming chords and making changes - while the strumming hand is keeping the rhythm. It can be difficult to coordinate these two for the new guitarist.
Read more: How to Improve Your Guitar Strumming Today
How to Give Your Guitar the "Violin" Effect
One of the coolest "tricks" you can use to spice up your leads is to make your guitar sound like a violin by using a technique known as a "volume swell".
A volume swell is performed by playing a note on the guitar, and using the volume knob to "ease" into the note, which produces a sound that is similar to that of a bow being played across a violin string.
The technique itself is fairly simple, but the execution can be a little tricky. It can, however, be mastered with some practice.
